Recent publications
Spousal loss is associated with an immediate increase in depressive symptoms. However, the consequences of widowhood for symptoms of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic have remained largely unexplored. In this study, we use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and fixed-effects regression modeling to address three research questions. First, how have depressive symptoms changed over time in 10 European countries for older adults by marital status and spousal death timing? Second, do the surviving spouses of persons who died during the pandemic face greater increases in depressive symptoms compared with adults widowed before the pandemic? Third, to what extent did the strictness of government restrictions moderate the pandemic widowhood penalty for symptoms of depression? We find that depressive symptoms increased dramatically for those widowed during the pandemic compared with widowed adults before the pandemic. In addition, the pandemic widowhood penalty does not apply to all those who lost their partners during the pandemic; it applies only to those who lost their partner when governments were enforcing stay-at-home orders. Our findings support the notion that the COVID-19 pandemic and stringent government restrictions exacerbated risk factors and hindered protective factors that affect older adults’ resilience to spousal death.
Aging research has conceptualized disablement via two primary frameworks. Paradigms of successful aging frame substantial disablement in aging as universally abnormal. These models have often been challenged as narrow and ableist, leaving out common experiences among people with chronic conditions. By contrast, steady decline paradigms frame substantial disablement in aging as universally normal. These models have invited challenges due to ageism inherent in automatically conflating older age and disability. Both frameworks juxtapose monolithic and rigid ideas of normalcy—and thus limit our understanding of dynamic possibilities in later life health and functioning. Given that people with progressive conditions often experience wide variability in daily status and inconsistency in long-term outcomes, current later-life disablement models may overlook such experiences. We thus propose additional nuance in later-life disablement modeling that brings innovative stochastic frameworks of daily health and functioning to longitudinal trajectory concepts. Using an “aging with progressive disease perspective,” we outline gaps and opportunities in the current landscape of later-life disablement modeling. We then engage our standpoints from lived experience with progressive conditions to recommend new directions in conceptualizing relationships between aging and disability. Including such conditions in later-life disablement models can improve health care and supportive services for affected individuals.
The imperative of water security (defined by the UN as ‘the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water’) looms large in the quest for the European Union’s (EU) sustainable water management, both within its borders and beyond. As climate change continues, the EU faces growing threats to water security, stemming from increased freshwater variability, scarcity, and declining freshwater quality. This chapter delves into the largely uncharted territory of security considerations underpinning sustainable water management as they play out in EU external relations law. Of particular concern is in fact the international dimension of the water security challenge, necessitating cross-border cooperation with third-party nations. Tensions and conflicts in shared transboundary basins, lakes, and aquifers serve as stark reminders of the importance of cooperative approaches. The Chapter explores the security facets of freshwater and the legal instruments available to the EU to face them. To that aim, this Chapter undertakes an analysis of the interplay between water security and sustainability, especially focusing on the concepts of “conflicts” and “migration,” exemplified by situations in the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates basins. It delves into the complex web of EU external relations instruments, encompassing treaty law, secondary law, international law, and policy instruments, highlighting that the legal framework differs significantly depending on whether the situation falls partially within or entirely outside the EU's territorial boundaries. The Chapter concludes by emphasizing the critical role the EU must play in fostering resilience and cooperation in water governance, as climate change-induced unpredictability continues to reshape global water dynamics.
On December 13, 2023, Australia became the first country to ban engineered stone. This material contains more than 80 percent crystalline silica, agglomerated with resins, metal oxides and other (potentially toxic) substances. Engineered stone
has become a mass-market product since the late 1990s and has contributed to a worldwide resurgence of accelerated forms of silicosis and a notable incidence of systemic diseases. Such a ban is a very rare event in a world where the regulatory
framework governing the use of toxic substances in the workplace is generally limited to setting exposure limits. The Australian decision is exemplary in many respects: it is based on public consultation with all stakeholders, it contributes
to updating biomedical knowledge that industries seek to conceal or undermine, and it is based on a realistic vision of real working conditions. In the absence of any evidence that lowering the silica content of this material would reduce occupational
hazards related to toxic cocktail effects, this ban implements an evidence-based and precautionary public health policy.
Although criminal trials are primarily designed to repress individual acts, a new role has emerged in the era of French jihadist trials. They have transformed into a ‘forum’ giving voice to different actors to comprehend the phenomenon in all its complexity, as in truth commissions: defendants presented their path to radicalization, victims related their trauma, experts situated jihadism in a socio-political context, and security forces disclosed their work. Aligned with forms of justice, which seeks to return control ‘stolen’ by professionals to the parties involved, they also place significant emphasis on emotions, in contrast to the cold, impersonal authority of conventional law, which relies on legal rhetoric, justified to maintain neutrality and impartiality.
Employing an ethnographic approach, we examine this trial as an experiment that challenges the way justice is administered after mass violence. Our premise is that this judicial experiment can propose a new paradigm for the prosecution of mass crimes, in line with contemporary new mechanisms that more effectively incorporate restorative objectives. It could serve as inspiration for procedures in international courts by attributing space to the direct participation of both the victims and the defendants, basing the procedure on narrative rather than strict legalistic rules, and engaging with social science expertise.
Background
Intensive care units (ICU) are characterized by high medical assistance costs and great complexity. Recommendations to determine the needs of medical staff are scarce, generating appreciable variability. The French Intensive Care Society (FICS) and the French National Council of Intensive Care Medicine (CNP MIR, Conseil National Professionel de Médecine Intensive Réanimation) have established a technical committee of experts, the purposes of which were to draft recommendations regarding staffing needs in ICUs and to propose optimal organisation of work hours, a key objective being improved workplace quality of life.
Results
Literature analysis was conducted according to the GRADE methodology (Grade of Recommendation Assessment, Development and Evaluation). The synthesis work of the experts according to the GRADE method led to the development of 22 recommendations in 6 field. The experts issued a strong recommendation associated with a high level of evidence which is that work organization be given priority during periods of permanent care, with a maximum 16 h of consecutive work permitted. For 21 other recommendations, the level of evidence did not allow GRADE classification, and led to the formulation of expert opinions. All recommendations and expert opinions were validated (strong agreement).
Conclusion
The work in the intensive care unit and in the intermediate intensive care unit is multifaceted, both clinical and non-clinical, and must include at least the following continuity and quality for patient safety. This document provides a detailed framework to propose an optimal medical staff.
From an intercultural perspective, this article explores majority/minority and between minorities interactions, and revisits Allport’s contact theory, in a socially and ethnically diverse urban area hosting a large proportion of Jews and Muslims. The data comes from a telephone survey of a sample of inhabitants of the 19 th arrondissement of Paris. Open and closed questions explore the symbolic social and political boundaries respondents construct between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and their patterns of sociability. Survey experiments with vignettes deal with more sensitive issues (reactions to circulating cartoons at school and police reactions to verbal assault, according to the ethnicity of the victim). The immediate social and ethnic surrounding of each respondent is reconstructed on the basis of census and ethnographic data. The results go against several common beliefs. Religion is not the only dimension of respondents’ identity; it intersects with social class, gender and generation. The relations between Jews and Muslims are not so much conflictual as ambivalent. Being minorities and feeling discriminated against as such brings them together. They both are more religious than the majority population, more traditional on sexual issues and more family-oriented, and most of them consider that Jews and Muslims have a common cultural heritage and should be united against discrimination. Nevertheless, there are friction points (Israeli-Palestinian conflict/the colonial past of France). Politically and socially Muslims are closer to the non-European immigrants, while Jews are closer to the French and the European-born ‘white’ population. Antisemitism is a clear taboo; anti-Jewish cartoons are seen as far more reprehensible than any other. But a majority of the sample, and Muslims a little more than average, see Jews as a ‘group apart’, and believe in the old stereotype about Jews having more influence, being more likely, for instance, to be helped by the police if needed.
Many important pro‐environmental conservation practices do not only require money, but they also require time. This paper examines what role the shadow price of time plays in shaping green preferences across different behavioral domains. Using household production theory, we develop a simple model of “selfish” green consumer behavior that predicts how (i) rising wages and (ii) longer working hours influence how consumers trade‐off between purchasing relatively expensive green goods and engaging in time‐intensive conservation practices. The model predicts that rising wages will increase the consumer's Willingness To Pay (WTP) for green goods, but also reduce their propensity to adopt time‐intensive conservation practices. A second prediction is that self‐perceived financial stress and time stress will have asymmetric effects on inhibiting the adoption of green purchasing and conservation practices. Although time stress is predicted to have no significant influence on consumers' tendency to purchase green goods, it will inhibit the consumers' tendency to engage in time‐intensive conservation practices. The reverse is true for financial stress. Empirical evidence sourced from a French household survey supports these hypotheses and policy implications are discussed.
The EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA) is an ambitious piece of legislation. Articles 34–35 DSA establish a risk assessment and mitigation regime for the largest online platforms, which is intended to play a key role in addressing systemic issues like the effects of platform design and recommendations, structural discrimination, and the dissemination of harmful content. However, many open questions remain about how this regime will be implemented in practice. In this context, Articles 45–47 DSA provide for codes of conduct to clarify and supplement these obligations. Codes of conduct could therefore significantly shape the DSA’s implementation, and ultimately its effectiveness. They could also serve as a model for codes of conduct under the 2024 Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). In this chapter, we provide a brief doctrinal analysis of the functions served by codes of conduct in the DSA. We then consider the potential benefits and disadvantages of using soft law codes to supplement the DSA’s hard law framework. Finally, using the 2023 contretemps between X (formerly Twitter) and several EU commissioners over X’s participation in the Code of Practice on Disinformation as a point of departure, we consider the question of whether participating in such codes is really voluntary. This analysis highlights that codes of conduct are tools that EU politicians can deploy for political purposes—a dynamic that has once again been illustrated during the negotiations surrounding the AIA.
While intersectional theory has gained significant attention, disability remains rarely addressed, particularly in France. This article first underscores two primary challenges in intersecting disability with social class, gender, or race: resolving definitional obstacles to designate “disability” as a hierarchical system, and evaluating the theoretical significance of treating this system alongside those traditionally studied. The prevalent focus on class-like mechanisms in French research hampers the acknowledgment of disability alongside other analytical categories. I then categorize the existing literature into four significant areas of research, inspired by McCall (Signs 30:1771–1800, 2005): inequalities concerning impairments and functional limitations (pre-categorical approach); social influences on diagnoses and disability recognition (anti-categorical approach); targeted situations of disabled groups (intra-categorical approach); and processes generating inequalities across multiple hierarchical systems (inter-categorical approach). Finally, I outline five avenues for future research.
This Memory Studies Review special issue explores the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence ( ai ) and collective memory. In the one hand, the emergence of generative ai , exemplified by ChatGPT’s 2022 release, appears to herald a new infrastructure for collective memory. On the other, the memory studies work highlights the limits and the backlashes of this new form of memory in its social dimension. This leads to raise a provocative, open-ended question: Is artificial intelligence the future of collective memory? Our issue brings together diverse perspectives from memory studies scholars of different backgrounds and machine learning practitioners, fostering critical engagement with ai in memory practices. This multidisciplinary approach offers an initial exploration of the interactions between ai -powered software, platforms, and collective memory. The articles herein present a multifaceted analysis of ai ’s role in shaping collective memory’s future. We advocate for increased interdisciplinary collaboration and ethical reflection in this rapidly evolving domain, providing memory studies scholars with a foundation for understanding and engaging with these technological transformations.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, more and more collections of manuscripts have been unearthed in archaeological contexts, from Cairo and Dunhuang to Qumran. Situated at the intersection of archaeological and philological practices, these fossil libraries do not yield a simplistic narrative of ancient manuscripts miraculously reappearing and text corpora accidentally—or heroically—being discovered. On the contrary, they require two incompatible epistemologies to come together, over time, in a meeting between the materiality of the written word and the semantics of the material object.
What happens to the history of medicine and health when the world surrounding us experiences crisis upon crisis? What kind of stories, methods and archives should we turn to? This article attempts to intensify the conversation between the history of medicine, the environmental humanities and the biosciences. I explore what we can gain, as historians of medicine, by engaging with landscapes – understood ecologically, historically and aesthetically. Such perspectives enable us to bring our histories of medicine and health “down to earth,” in the words of Bruno Latour. Noticing, unearthing and following the traces that form the landscape can also help us imagine unimagined histories, that are open-ended, and shaped in unexpected ways by non-human agencies and interpretations. Drawing from my research in East Cameroon, I examine how the genetic sequences of pathogens ( hiv and the hepatitis C virus), as well as botanical, archeological and architectural traces, can help us locate histories of medicine within a broader consideration of ruderality – the shared condition of living among the rubble. Using molecular phylogeny and ethnography as arts of tracing, I explore how we can write a history of hiv -Aids and of other mid–twentieth century disease emergences and bioinvasions by starting with the ruderal landscapes of Central Africa, shaped by crisis upon crisis and by medicine itself.
The October 2016 train accident on Cameroon’s main railway line remains shrouded in mystery. The announcement of the derailment before it happened, followed by a denial by the Minister of Transport a few hours later, at the very moment of the accident, has given rise to much speculation. According to testimonies collected in Eséka through fieldwork and the media, this tragic event was interpreted as the result of a witchcraft conspiracy. The inhabitants of the Bassa region, who consider the railway crossing their territory as a cultural heritage, had expressed their discontent with attempts to rationalize the line for some time. These accounts reveal that the disaster was triggered by collective action which unfolded through three distinct phases: labelling, whereby words acquire particular power; harbingers of misfortune; and finally, the bewitchment of the train to ‘zombify’ it, leading to its derailment. In response to these witchcraft imaginaries, the president himself addressed the Bassa’s grievances and requested an adjustment of the train stops, thus demonstrating the performativity of witchcraft and its capacity to put grievances on the agenda and to shape public policies. This article puts forward the idea that witchcraft represents a repertoire from which a community draws to express dissent. Bewitching and zombifying the train to make it derail are, for some actors, a way of signalling to the modern African state that it is not always ‘master in its own house’, that it does not have total control over reality and that it must constantly negotiate its authority.
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