Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Despite the formal end of civil war and armed conflict, Mexico continued to experience significant levels of violence during the 1930s and 1940s. This period has traditionally been associated with the process of pacification, institutionalization, and centralization of power that enabled the consolidation of rule in postrevolutionary Mexico, a process epitomized by the marked national decline in levels of homicide that began during the 1940s and continued during the second half of the 20th century. The dynamics of coercion and resistance that characterized state-society relations at the regional and local levels reveal, however, that violence pervaded all aspects of society and that it was perpetrated by a multiplicity of actors, including vigilantes, pistoleros, private militias, lynch mobs, military, police, and other violent entrepreneurs. Violence was used as both a means to contest the legitimacy of the postrevolutionary state project as well as an instrument of control and coercion on behalf of political elites and local power brokers. Conversely, violence superseded the realm of traditional politics and constituted a central force shaping Mexican society. Violence against women in the public and private spheres, violence driven by economic interests, and citizens’ attempts to control crime and social transgressions reveal that citizens—and not only state actors—contributed to the reproduction of violence. Although violence in postrevolutionary Mexico was neither centralized nor exercised in a top-down manner, impunity and collusion between criminal and political elements were central in the production and perpetuation of violence both within the state and within civil society. When examined in light of these two decades of the postrevolutionary period, the character and levels of violence in contemporary Mexico appear less as an aberration and more as the latest expression of a longer, though uneven and nonlinear, historical trajectory of decentralized, multifaceted, and multi-actor forms of violence.

Cohort study of hospitalists’ procedural skills: baseline competence and durability after simulation-based training

ObjectivesHospitalists are expected to be competent in performing bedside procedures, which are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. A national decline in procedures performed by hospitalists has prompted questions about their procedural competency. Additionally, though simulation-based mastery learning (SBML) has been shown to be effective among trainees whether this approach has enduring benefits for independent practitioners who already have experience is unknown. We aimed to assess the baseline procedural skill of hospitalists already credentialed to perform procedures. We hypothesised that simulation-based training of hospitalists would result in durable skill gains after several months.DesignProspective cohort study with pretraining and post-training measurements.SettingSingle, large, urban academic medical centre in the USA.ParticipantsTwenty-two out of 38 eligible participants defined as hospitalists working on teaching services where they would supervise trainees performing procedures.InterventionsOne-on-one, 60 min SBML of lumbar puncture (LP) and abdominal paracentesis (AP).Primary and secondary outcome measuresOur primary outcome was the percentage of hospitalists obtaining minimum passing scores (MPS) on LP and AP checklists; our secondary outcomes were average checklist scores and self-reported confidence.ResultsAt baseline, only 16% hospitalists met or exceeded the MPS for LP and 32% for AP. Immediately after SBML, 100% of hospitalists reached this threshold. Reassessment an average of 7 months later revealed that only 40% of hospitalists achieved the MPS. Confidence increased initially after training but declined over time.ConclusionsHospitalists may be performing invasive bedside procedures without demonstration of adequate skill. A single evidence-based training intervention was insufficient to sustain skills for the majority of hospitalists over a short period of time. More stringent practices for certifying hospitalists who perform risky procedures are warranted, as well as mechanisms to support skill maintenance, such as periodic simulation-based training and assessment.

Spain’s Sanchez faces tough battle after Madrid loss

Significance The result led Pablo Iglesias, the founder of Unidas Podemos (UP), which is part of Sanchez’s minority left-wing government, to resign from politics. It also reinforced the national decline of the centre-right Ciudadanos (Cs) party, on which Sanchez has sometimes relied for parliamentary support. Impacts A fresh independence push in Catalonia would boost the electoral prospects of the PP and the far-right Vox party across Spain. Whether to cooperate with Vox in government could become the main issue of division within the PP. The return to traditional two-party competition between the PP and PSOE would increase the prospect of more stable governments.

Composing the North: A Musical Study of Identity, Transformation, and Reflection

In 2015, occursus – a network of artists, researchers, and academics with an interest in space and spatialities in art – commissioned a series of musical compositions based on a small patch of land close to the centre of Sheffield, England. The land in question, which houses one of the world’s oldest cementation furnaces, has witnessed a remarkable period of transformation; initially standing among some 2,500 furnaces in the heart of the industrialised city centre, the national decline of steel production resulted in dereliction and for much of the past sixty years the furnace towered over wasteland. occursus acquired the land in 2012, and turned it into a community arts space, now known as Furnace Park. This article explains how a series of composers responded to this park through the creation of new musical works. Although most attention is directed to the author’s own work, Foundry Flux (2015), the primary focus of the article is on the collective approach to occursus’ objectives which, to the surprise of all of the commission-holders, focused their attention way beyond the tiny patch of land in the heart of Sheffield; the project became a catalyst for: 1) studying the identity of the city; 2) observing and initiating transformations of that identity; and 3) reflecting upon one’s own role within such identity transformations. In combining these three, those in the group found themselves engaged in a practical process of composing the north.

Jewish National Decline and Biblical Figures as Classical Exempla: Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, and Elisha in De Excidio 5.2.1

The fourth century of the Common Era was a period significant for witnessing the effective birth of Christian historiography and the (putatively) definitive separation of ‘Jew’ and ‘Christian’ as distinctive identities. A text emerged, known as Pseudo-Hegesippus or De Excidio Hierosolymitano (On the Destruction of Jerusalem). This text illustrates how Christian historiography and Christian anti-Jewish ideology at that time could engage with the traditions of classical antiquity. In particular, this article argues that Pseudo-Hegesippus deploys figures from the Hebrew Bible in the mode of classical exempla and that it does so within the largely classical conceptual framework of national decline. For Pseudo-Hegesippus, biblical figures presented as classical exempla serve to illustrate the historical decline of the Jews until their effective end in 70 CE (when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple). One passage, De Excidio 5.2.1, and its enlistment of five Hebrew heroes illustrates this point particularly well. The use of exemplarity and the theme of national decline employed there help us appreciate De Excidio as a distinctive contribution to early Christian historiography and anti-Jewish literature in late antiquity; this expands our ability to imagine the ways in which fourth-century Christian authors could conceive of and articulate Jewish history in classical terms.

Trouble in the Heartland

Chapter 3 centers on the disappearances of Des Moines Register paperboys Johnny Gosch and Eugene Wade Martin in 1982 and 1984, respectively. These incidents challenged white Midwestern ideas about childhood and regional innocence, as locals took the paperboy cases as signs of regional and national decline. White Iowans responded by demanding state protection for their children, who supposedly faced new threats from strangers emboldened by moral relativism and sexual liberation and impervious to the symbolic power of an innocent and secure Midwest. Many of the legal and cultural mechanisms adopted in the service of protecting young Iowans—including the iconic milk carton campaign—were replicated in the construction of the national child safety regime.

History of the Personality Disorders Narcissism and Psychopathic Personality

Psychopathic personality (a term that has been largely supplanted in psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ nosologies by anti-social personality disorder) and narcissism are venerable, widely used, and fiercely contested categories of personality disorder. Psychopathic personality was originally delineated in the early years of the 20th century to encompass behavior that was, in experts’ estimation, decidedly not normal but that fit none of the other categories of mental disease. Critics of the diagnosis claimed it was but another label for individuals’ non-conformity with social norms, used to punish the poor and marginal. Narcissism has had an even more tumultuous history than psychopathy. Referring simultaneously to traits considered pathological (grandiosity, exploitativeness, manipulativeness) and to traits thought desirable (high self-esteem, capacity for leadership and authority), narcissism has been at the center of debates over national decline and the character of the modal American for the past half-century. Both categories have also sparked controversy along the trait/ state, dimensional/ categorical divide that flared in the run-up to the publication of the 5th edition of psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013. Thousands of papers have attempted to resolve the ambiguities surrounding both diagnoses, but these ambiguities have proven productive (of research and new knowledge) and are unlikely to be resolved soon.