Anglo American media representations, traditional medicine, and HIV/AIDS in South Africa: from muti killings to garlic cures

Before 2000 limited media coverage of medicine in South Africa existed, yet much of what did exist centered primarily on traditional healing practices. It was not until the introduction of HIV/AIDS that traditional medicine was seen as having some potential value to the population, but only so far as the ability of traditional healers to direct patients to biomedical treatment. This article examines how the contemporary western media portrays medicine in South Africa and how the introduction of HIV/AIDS as a major news story has shifted the depiction of western and traditional medical treatment. Insights from these questions are examined in light of the colonial context of South Africa’s political struggle over medicine.     

The future relevance of medical geography for health planning,health and development in the third world

Conclusions: the Future Relevance of Medical Geography in the Third World This article has deliberately ranged widely and suggested various research themes to which medical geographers interested in health and development might turn their attention. The International Geographical Union Commission on Health and Development established in 1988 suggested a research agenda which includes many of them (see IGU Commission on Health and Development, Circular Letter No. 1 published in GeoJournal 17, 4, 659–660 (1988)). The achievement of even part of such an agenda will call for close international collaboration in research amongst medical geographers and allied disciplines.Increasingly, medical geographers are gaining applied experience in health and health care in the developing world. They are obtaining breadth and depth of knowledge and are now, for example, cogniscant of financial matters such as those involved in the cost explosion in health care worlwide which has particularly sinister implications for the health of Third World countries (Josephg and Phillips 1984). They, too, are now increasingly comfortable in dealing with epidemiological and demographic data. Geographers now no longer focus solely on phenomena such as distance decay or environments for disease. They are aware that human resources, intelligence, aspirations, attitudes and finance are all potent variables influencing successful health care and health in populations.In the future, therefore, the wide-ranging ambit of medical geography will increasingly become relevant to health and health care research in the Third World. Contributions of value will emerge both from those geographers adopting more socio-political stances and those adopting a more empiricist approach. However, it is the holistic nature of geography, with its wide academic links, and the courage of geographers to research in new topics and gain sound understanding of them which will increasingly be recognized. The days of extempore contributions to political, policy and practical debates on health and development are now largely past. Well researched, solid and sound medical geography contributions will, it is hoped, forge ahead.     

Social epidemiology as medical geography: Back to the future

There is something very traditional about Nancy Krieger’s decidedly modern work. She advances a social epidemiology that is multidisciplinary, advancing a “quantitative population science” that is also spatial in its approach and method of analysis. Many geographers see their work as affirming the potential of medical cartography and geography as disciplines critical to public health studies of disease incidence. This article argues that the history of epidemiology and public health are historically spatial and geographic, a link lost in the research of many twentieth century health researchers. A review of the history of medical geography, and of public health, insists upon the spatiality of disease studies as a critical groundwork not simply for contemporary disease studies but for the history of disease studies as they have slowly developed over for more than 200 years.     

The geography of medical care delivery: an historical perspective

A weakness of research into urban service delivery has been its ahistorical approach. Historical geographers, on the other hand, have neglected the issue of urban service delivery. This paper illustrates the influence and interaction of urbanization, professionalization and public policy on urban service delivery using the example of medical care in Britain.     

Publication practices in physical and human geography: a comment on Nigel Thrift’s ‘The future of geography’

This note expands on, and in some respects challenges, the distinction Thrift (Geoforum 33 (2002) 291) makes between the publication practices of young human and physical geographers. Evidence on highly-cited papers by eminent British geographers is used to suggest that human geographers have been publishing mainly in human-geography journals, but physical geographers in a wider range of outlets, for at least two decades; and that the most influential papers of all, human or physical, have generally been in multi- or inter-disciplinary journals. Publication in ‘non-geographical’ journals is desirable since it helps geographers have a wider impact. Conversely, the discipline is harmed if influential outsiders perceive geographers as only concerned with internal debates and seeking to impress each other.     

The geography of tourism in France: definition,scope and themes

Conclusions The substantial body of literature produced in the last two decades bears witness to the marked development of the geography of tourism in France over this period. This research has been strongly influenced by traditional geographic thought and is notable for the logic which underlies it. At the same time much remains to be done, with various avenues for future research being suggested in this paper. French geographers might also look increasingly outwards and to the work of others. By considering new and different methodologies, theories and fields of interest, the conceptual base of the subject might be enlarged and a more systematic approach developed. This need is keenly felt and this opening up is starting to occur, particularly through the exchange of ideas with foreign geographers at meetings of the national or international (IGU) commissions on the geography of tourism.     

论《本草》与化工矿产

医学史上,中国古代人类利用矿石类入药,应晚于植物类。最早记录医药矿物的专著为东汉末年的《神农本草经》,至明万历年间李时珍的《本草纲目》中已记载了217种无机药物。其中大部分为与化工矿产相关的(岩石)矿物。王嘉荫教授1957年曾对《本草纲目》中的矿石类药物进行了系统的鉴别。为了使药用矿物的界定更加准确、规范,将相关中药名与矿物名加以对照,将常用中药矿石类药物特征及化工矿产医药用途分别进行系统归纳,对中医药与矿物相结合的研究及进一步开拓化工矿产资源利用途径是有益的。     

Mobile bodies: Animal migration in North American history

North Americans have had a profound affect on wildlife, especially migratory animals such as elk, bison, salmon, and many species of birds. Migration is a vital adaptation for these and other species. Yet despite this importance and the myriad ways in which people have influenced and understood migration, environmental geographers have devoted scant attention to it. This paper examines the role of animal migration in North American history. North Americans have affected and managed animal migrants in six primary ways: transforming migrant habitats; harvesting migrants; obstructing and facilitating migrants; working across borders; visualizing migrants; and accepting and resisting migrants. I examine these different aspects of animal migration history in North America and end with a discussion of how other geographers such as environmental historical geographers, political ecologists, and animal geographers can employ this framework.     

A comparison of the use of traditional and modern medicine in primary health centres in Tamil Nadu

Since 1980, many of the state governments in India have introduced programmes to integrate traditional medical systems (TM) into official health care institutions and services at different administrative levels. One of these schemes is at Primary Health Centres (phcs) in various districts. However, little research has been undertaken to date on relative demand and utilization, or on the extent to which TM is seen or used as a complement, alternative or supplement to biomedical services, in the same phc setting. The consumer assumes an important role in an integrated approach, where illness behaviour is understood to be a decision-making process. From the structuralist aspect also, the needs and decisions (in a given situation) as perceived by the administration are not necessarily the same as subjectively felt needs, wants, or even expressed needs of individuals. It is hoped research into the degree of usage and levels of clinical utilization of the two coexisting services will be useful in planning norms and services, estimation of recurrent expenditures and allocation of resources for effective functioning of the phcs. This paper presents the findings of a questionnaire based on a quota sample of users of phcs. eighty patients in each of the Allopathy and Siddha medicine wings were interviewed in three phcs in Tamil Nadu, a total of 480 respondents. The main issues considered in this paper are:

1. Socio-economic characteristics of the users.
2. Treatment patterns: differential preferences for treatment methods for various disease conditions; multiple-usage — interchangeable or concurrently for the same ailment; degree of medical pluralism; spatial patterns of movement.
3. The reasons for participating in the present treatment.
4. Behaviour, satisfaction, attitudes, opinions, preferences, experiences.
5. Conclusions and implications of the study for research and service planning.

This study, although based on small and not necessarily representative samples, illustrates some of the potentials and shortcomings of an integrated approach at the institutional level.     

‘Public intellectuals’, geography, its representations and its publics

Recent years have seen academic geographers engaged in a series of debates over the current state of the discipline, its ‘relevance’ to others in the social sciences, to policy-makers, and to those studying geography at school age. This short critical review builds upon an issue raised in this journal [Thrift, N., 2002. The future of geography. Geoforum 33, 291–298], namely the role of geographers as public intellectuals. After reviewing the different ways in which the notion of public intellectuals has been understood, the paper turns to geography’s representations and to its publics. The paper concludes by arguing for an appreciation of the full range of ways in which geographers call forth publics through a range of representational strategies. It suggests that regardless of how geographers perform publicly and intellectually, two things are perhaps worth remembering: it is in the interest of geographers to name what they do as geography and to name themselves as geographers.     

药材矿物学的探讨

本文提出的药材矿物学是矿物学研究领域中正在形成的分支。其研究对象包括由矿物组成的和或多或少含有矿物成分的中药材。其主要研究内容是以矿物学理论和方法对作为药材的矿物的成分和特性进行研究,并向中药学和中医学渗透,从而探索和讨论矿物药材与其药理疗效之间的关系。     

On the role of evidence in physical and human geography

While physical geographers are united in a commitment to the scientific method with its emphasis on quantitative evidence, human geographers face a dilemma in deciding whether to adopt a scientific or humanistic approach in their research. The scientific approach offers a more secure, objective knowledge, but limits the scholar to a relatively narrow range of topics. The humanistic approach allows the scholar to explore a wide range of human experiences, but it lacks rigorous procedures of objective verification. The difficulty of the application of theoretical ideas to human societies can, to some extent, be avoided by adopting an historical approach, with an emphasis on the empirical investigation of human activity as a reflection of ideas. As long as human geographers have a commitment to basing their interpretations of geographical phenomena on objective evidence the possibility of a profitable co-operation exists among proponents of different philosophical approaches. A unified human geography embracing scholars of diverse views depends for its success on the identification of geographical problems that transcend philosophical and theoretical points of view.     

Situated knowledges and the spaces of consent

Informed consent has often been presented as a kind of ethical panacea, the best way of guarding against medical and scientific abuses of human rights. However recent empirical research has led bioethicists to question both the feasibility and the value of informed consent procedures. This paper also seeks to critique informed consent, but focuses less on its empirical shortcomings. Instead, this paper questions the assumption that ethics involves engaging in the kind of rational, distanced, objective reflection traditionally considered the basis of both scientific observation and ethical decision making. Drawing on recent insights from ethical geography and geographers studying the biotechnology industry, I wish to argue that ethical reflection is a relational and situated process, less about being distanced and objective, and more about recognizing how our ethical decisions are shaped by our social and material environment.     

Aims and implementation in British urban and regional planning

Failure to fully understand or recognise crucial but culturally-determined British dimensions has led to confusion and error even among the British geographers in understanding and contributing to, urban and regional planning. This point assumes more rather than less significance in the context of a discussion between British and Soviet geographers. This paper therefore examines in part one, three fundamental features of the British system of urban and regional planning and then proceeds in part two to focus on the aims and their implementation. It concludes with a reference to the nature of the relationship between planning and geography.     

Geographies of production in 3D: Theoretical and research implications stemming from additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (or 3D printing) is a comparatively new and evolving form of production that has the potential to transform the geographies of manufacturing. While this technology has garnered significant hype in the popular media, the topic has been virtually ignored in academic circles outside of business- and industry-specific, technology-oriented journals. Given its prospective impacts on the secondary sector and the potential for geographers to explore these transitions, this article provides a discussion of the possible opportunities for theoretical explorations and research into the place-based facets of additive manufacturing and its impacts on, or integration with, traditional manufacturing. In particular, we examine the spatial ramifications of this technology on supply, demand, innovation, global production networks, and the role of the state juxtaposed against contemporary insights pertaining to advances in additive manufacturing.     

麦饭石及其应用开发刍议

麦饭石是一种由我国古代医学家命名的传统中药品种 ,它属于花岗质岩类 ,其中含维持动物体正常生长所必备的 18种元素。近年来研究表明 ,麦饭石除其医疗功能之外 ,还以其所具有的生物活性、吸附性、水调节性、矿化性而在保健、美容、畜牧、水产养殖及食品生产、环保等领域具有广泛的用途 ,具有很大的开发潜力     

Japan's traditional view of nature and interpretation of landscape

Recently a few Japanese geographers became aware that the concept of nature in modern geography differs from that of traditional Japanese thought. As modern geography in Japan was formed by the influence of European geography, most academic geographers in Japan have followed the occidental view that proposed an opposition between cultural and natural landscapes and that, due to the belief in man's power, sees the former as superior to the latter. From an economic view point, in fact, the European concept of nature which is opposed to culture has contributed to land exploitation that caused the destruction of Japan's natural landscape.The time has come to consider the traditional Japanese idea of nature as Kami (gods) in comparison with the binary opposition of nature/culture which derives from modern rationalism. Kami who represent elements of nature belonged to a Pantheon in ancient Japan. Some examples of the Kami's names and their English explanations are as follows: Amaterasuomikami (godess of sun), Oyamatsumi-no-kami (god of the mountain's spirit), Nozuchi-no-kami (god of the field's spirit). In ancient Japan people believed that natural landscapes were created and inhabited by these Kami, and that the will of these Kami controlled the cultural domain. However, people provided shrines for Kami to placate their reckless domination. In this context, culture is in the hands of nature. This idea of nature's superiority to culture can explain the Japanese geographical concept of landscape.     

Capitalist homoficience,the frontier and uneven development in Southern Africa

Frontier studies continue to be compromised by a double inadequacy. While geographers mistakenly cling to obsolete models of frontier process, those who have adopted a more progressive interactionist definition have difficulty conceptualizing the components and dimensions of interaction. The conceptual framework suggested by the literature on the articulation of modes of production is proposed as a partial resolution of the problem. Discarding the abstract and problematical notion of the mode of production as a useful tool for concrete analysis, attention is focused on the concepts and hypotheses suggested by the notion of articulation. It is proposed that in southern Africa, at least, this concept offers geographers a way forward which will circumvent the difficulties currently being experienced by the predominantly liberal interactionist school.     

Deprivation,resources and planning: Some implications for applied rural geography

Recent concern over social deprivation in rural areas of the U.K. has provided a new focus for applied rural geographers. However, the concept of deprivation may be broadened to include many other aspects of the rural environment, and therefore it offers a framework for more integrated approaches to planning in the countryside. A more dynamic strategy of rural research, involving greater cooperation between academic geographers and practising planners, and focussing upon problems of rural deprivation, is advocated in this paper.     

Geographical study of ethnicity: Comparison between downtown and suburban Chinese in Metropolitan Los Angeles

There are two main schools of theory in the history of ethnic study in the US: acculturation/assimilation, and ethnicity/pluralism. The former emphasizes ethnic groups will merge to the host society and lose their entity; the latter indicates the ethnic identity will continue to exist. This paper proposes a now model of ethnic group distribution multiple cluster to support ethnicity/pluralism theory by adding the spatial perspective. The model indicates there are both traditional ethnic enclaves in inner city and new relatively concentrated ethnic residential and business districts. Creating a new landscape of their own in suburb will help the persistence of ethnic identity. The situation of Chinese. in Monterey Park becomes a Chinese hub with strong ethnic signature and entities, which attracts more Chinese people and businesses.