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5 Experts and childcare ‘bibles’: mothers and advice literature C hildcare manuals were abundant throughout the twentieth century and many self-proclaimed experts were writing on the subject. Their advice was by no means consistent though, and mothers were under pressure to conform to conflicting models of care. The writings of the experts were influenced by contemporary theories of child development. Thinking on child development in the years after 1945 was greatly influenced by the experiences of World War Two, with children experiencing family breakdown
intellectuals as experts 29 2 1 Intellectuals as experts Those who are charged with saying what counts as true – Michel Foucault2 As I am writing this chapter, the news is heartbreaking: floods in India, Nepal and Bangladesh displacing millions and killing thousands – a taster of climate change to come; the resurgence of fears of nuclear war and ill-chosen jokes about Armageddon from those who have not experienced this fear as real; a US president who equates armed neo-Nazis in Charlottesville with anti-fascist protesters and sanctions police brutality; a
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. Albert Camus, The Plague In times of crisis, the norm is to do what the experts tell us. In times of health crisis, listening to public health experts, and acting accordingly, becomes a rational and ethical imperative. After the outbreak of the most serious public health emergency in living memory, governments around the world are making decisions based on advice from public health experts, and all of us ‘ordinary’ citizens are told to
Introduction There's an old episode of Yes Minister where Jim Hacker is put in charge of making local government run more efficiently. 1 After a department meeting, one of the lower-ranking civil servants quietly comes up to him with a file of proposals. Hacker is impressed. He wonders why he hasn't met him before and asks why he is not more senior. The official responds with a resigned smile: ‘Alas, I'm an expert.’ Today, it's pretty much impossible to be both an expert and a leader
, whether in humans or in animals, was a threat and because medical aid was seen as an important means to ‘win the confidence’ of the colonised, 10 but also because the collation of data and the creation of knowledge which scientific investigation involved were a crucial part of the wider imperial project. But experts did not always agree among themselves. The field of tropical medicine is littered with
Experts and amateurs The British have traditionally distrusted intellectuals in politics, perhaps because intellectuals have generally exhibited impatience with the need to appease faction, party and electorate. As a result, it has often been suggested, the British Empire became the ideal laboratory for experimentation with ideas and policies formulated in an intellectual
This article aims to shed light on the post-mortem practices for Palestinian dead bodies when there is suspicion of human rights violations by Israeli military forces. By focusing on the case of Omran Abu Hamdieh from Al-Khalil (Hebron), the article explores the interactions between Palestinian social-institutional agents, Israeli military forces and international medico-legal agents. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data, the article explores how the intersectionality between the various controlling powers is inscribed over the Palestinian dead bodies and structures their death rites. The article claims that inviting foreign medico-legal experts in the Palestinian context could reveal the true death story and the human rights violations, but also reaffirms the sovereignty of the Israeli military forces over the Palestinian dead and lived bodies.
the courts ‘pressed medical witnesses for ever more certain opinions that might help satisfy the increasing demanding burdens of proof’, 2 and that expert witnesses, in infanticide trials among others, displayed ‘rectitude’ in resisting this process. Such ‘rectitude’ contrasts with the examples of overstated certainty that have been highlighted by historians and sociologists of science and legal
The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs is an exciting, new open access journal
hosted jointly by The Humanitarian Affairs Team at Save the Children UK, and
Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires MSF (Paris) and the
Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester. It
will contribute to current thinking around humanitarian governance, policy and
practice with academic rigour and political courage. The journal will challenge
contributors and readers to think critically about humanitarian issues that are
often approached from reductionist assumptions about what experience and
evidence mean. It will cover contemporary, historical, methodological and
applied subject matters and will bring together studies, debates and literature
reviews. The journal will engage with these through diverse online content,
including peer reviewed articles, expert interviews, policy analyses, literature
reviews and ‘spotlight’ features.
Our rationale can be summed up as
follows: the sector is growing and is facing severe ethical and practical
challenges. The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs will provide a space for serious
and inter-disciplinary academic and practitioner exchanges on pressing issues of
international interest.
The journal aims to be a home and platform for
leading thinkers on humanitarian affairs, a place where ideas are floated,
controversies are aired and new research is published and scrutinised. Areas in
which submissions will be considered include humanitarian financing, migrations
and responses, the history of humanitarian aid, failed humanitarian
interventions, media representations of humanitarianism, the changing landscape
of humanitarianism, the response of states to foreign interventions and critical
debates on concepts such as resilience or security.
is often filtered through expert and professional opinions. Historically, disaster studies have failed to ground research in local realities ( Gaillard, 2018 ; Altbach, 2004 ) and research on post-disaster recovery and resilience is usually done about people experiencing risk rather than being done by or with them ( Jigyasu, 2005 ). In addition, local actors are often stripped of their political agency and reduced to victims that are merely surviving or recovering from hazards ( Sou, 2021 ; Chandler, 2012 ; Bohle et al. , 2019). These troubling trends led a