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I realise there is a ban on non-health comments, but only just got back from holiday, so give me a break.
 
Three points:
 
Riot are complex but not inexplicable and require, as Alex says, some kind of empirical analysis of the kind that takes a bit of time.  In the mean time we will have to put up with moralising.
 
The observation of the riotlessness of Wales and Scotland is an important one to make - pretty absent from the mainstream UK media, as most things about Wales are.  I have only just returned from holiday, so may have missed something.
 
Difficult to be confident, but the political rhetorics of Wales and Scotland are very different from England, and need to be thrown into our analysis (however underpowered the civil service in Wales may be).  Not sure what Alex means by calibre, the people I work with seem to be pretty high calibre - and I have worked in England.  So keep on supporting devolution Alex - it is a process not an event!
 
Cardiff is no more a collection of villages than is Manchester - I lived in the latter for twenty years (including period when parts of Manchester were continually in the news for gun crime and violence) and loved living and shopping in the villages of Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury
 
One point of fact - health outcomes in Wales are not worse than those in Scotland.
 
Gareth
 
 


-----Forwarded by Gareth Williams/ssoghw1/CardiffUniversity on 22/08/2011 09:00 -----
To: [log in to unmask]
From: Axel Kaehne <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: "The Health Equity Network (HEN)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 15/08/2011 12:49
Subject: Re: HEN, oppression and intersectionality

hi there

I struggle to see where some of these 'explanations' are coming from or where they might lead. Here is why: I am happy to concede that when it comes to explaining people's behaviour we might use measures of deprivation. I have done so myself and they are very useful. However social inequality is a comparative measure and I would like to know what the unit of comparison is? People talk about inequality in England. Others talk about Wales etc. The nations might be useful for comparisons when assessing health system performances but when it comes to individual behaviour or group behaviour then wouldnt we need to work with an assumption that social inequality is reflected and perceived similarly across the sample? How can we do this? Who says that a person in Tottenham perceives social inequalities the same way as the person in Gloucester but differently to the person in Wrexham? The fact is that it is extremely difficult to factor in social inequalities. That we want to see them as predictors of a certain type of behaviour only shows that we happen to hold that assumption. 

I am not saying that social inequalities may not influence behaviour. On the contrary, but that it is an empirical question, and that social inequalities cannot play the role of the independent variable until we know how they are being perceived and we have good robust theories about perception and its link to behavioural patterns in the groups we examine. 

When it comes to Wales and an 'explanation' why there were no riots or looting, I dont think anybody can give an 'explanation'. We can all have a stab at it, but my guess is that those 'explanations' reflect our assumptions about Wales and England more than anything we know. 

The fact is that Wales has the worst health outcomes in the UK, is the poorest amongst the nations in the UK but also lacks urban centres ( I live in Cardiff next to the central station and I can look out of my window and see sheep and fields... Cardiff like Swansea is basically an agglomerate of villages). So we may lack the dynamics of urban behaviour that London and Manchester has. But that's not an explanation, only a guess. 

With regard to leadership in Wales, well I am a strong supporter of devolution, have  worked with WAG closely on some projects in the past and have to say, they are hardworking decent human beings. But it is also generally acknowledged that the calibre of politicians in the Welsh Assembly is not as high as it should be, that the civil service is far too small (you can count the social care department on your fingers) which in essence means, that the Welsh government is seriously UNDERpowered to do the job it is supposed to do. 

That has a knock on effect on leadership, regardless of what we think of Carwyn Jones and others. 

Hope this helps

Axel
On 14 Aug 2011, at 09:39, Martin Rathfelder wrote:

I think the explanation may be simpler.  There is now clearly local political leadership in Wales and Scotland.  When people watched the riots they didn't see that those rioters were in the same country as themsleves and therefore that they could also go out looting without fear of the police.

On 13/08/11 23:29, Mike hughes wrote:
Alex,

A good start at the taxonomy and I know you know it will be controversial.

Actually as an observational study it might sadly be accurate. I indeed
might be the only socialist libertarian who occasionally despairs to see
health inequalities which are about self determination and power,
repeatedly reduced to the familly income account.

It would great, and for public health liberating, if you are wrong.....

Mike Hughes.



Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Aug 2011, at 20:11, Alex Scott-Samuel
<[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
wrote:

I've watched this discussion from Wales where I was on holiday; now
that I'm back I find it regrettable that no-one attempted to respond
to Cole's very valid points about the list. The fact is that in
polarised, unequal England, an academic involvement in health equity
by no means guarantees the social democratic critique you might expect
to find in an equity listserv. While Scotland and Wales now have
devolved governments that on the whole behave in a social democratic
fashion, we have had no such government in England since Thatcher came
to power in 1979. Blair had the rhetoric and indeed was commended by
the WHO social determinants commission for England's broad
inequalities strategy; sadly however it was a strategy without depth
in that it failed completely to acknowledge, let alone address the
root causes of inequality - which are of course a systematic element
and product of the market liberalism actively pursued by all post-1979
English governments.

Health ‘inequalogists’ fall into three groups: the social democrats /
socialists whose core values inform their equity discourse; the
‘microscopists’ who see inequality as an interesting research subject,
to be viewed as if through a microscope (you recognise them at
conferences because they find their new method for measuring
inequality to be as exciting as the democrats would find an effective
means of challenging inequality); and the ‘christian democrats’ - see
below* - who conceptualise equity within a socially and economically
conservative discourse. Active members of this list fall, in my
estimation, primarily into the second and especially the third group.

The above is of course why the highly relevant ideas of
intersectionality theory, to which Cole refers, never feature in HEN
discussions. With their direct focus on power inequalities and
oppression, they are I fear beyond the HEN horizons – at least as
currently constituted.

All the best, Alex

* Wikipedia: Christian democracyis a political ideology that seeks to
apply Christian principles to public policy. It emerged in
nineteenth-century Europe under the influence of conservatism and
Catholic social teaching. It continues to be influential in Europe and
Latin America, though in a number of countries its Christian ethos has
been diluted by secularisation. In practice, Christian democracy is
often considered conservative on cultural, social and moral issues
(social conservatism) and advocates a social market economy in the
economic field (crossing over with social democratic economics but
based on the family).

On 10/08/2011 20:14, Gately, Cole wrote:
I don't write to this list usually, but I have to say I'm surprised
at the lack of anti-oppression analysis in many of the posts today. I
joined this network because I felt that any list that professes to
discuss issues of inequity must surely have some grasp of the ways
that race and class intersect and that riots that last for days on
end simply can't be accounted for by boredom.
I agree with Vernellia that oppression can very often lead to
rioting, or in the words of Darcus Howe (interviewed by the BBC
yesterday) insurrection. Where is the analysis? What about social
inequity? Why such reactionary, knee-jerk responses to what seems to
be an event that is related in all sorts of ways to the issues we are
all fighting to redress through social justice and equity work? I
understand that many of you are close to the rioting, but that should
not cloud your intellectual judgement. There are always people who
will exploit a situation to their own ends, but the anger unleashed
in these riots clearly come from a place of deep disaffection and anger.

Cole Gately
Street Outreach Coordinator
Mental Health and Street Outreach Services
Clinical and Preventive Services Division
Public Health Services
City of Hamilton
Housing Help Centre

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   -----Original Message-----
   *From:* The Health Equity Network (HEN)
   [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of
   *Vernellia Randall
   *Sent:* Wednesday, August 10, 2011 2:23 PM
   *To:* [log in to unmask]
   <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
   *Subject:* Re: May be of interest

   I wasn't suggesting that what is going on in england was a race
   riot. I was suggesting that people who are oppressed will
   sometime riot rather than take their oppression in silence. . .
   Whether race or class or something else. . . there is more going
   on than just no respect for the law.



--
Martin Rathfelder
Director
Socialist Health Association
22 Blair Road
Manchester
M16 8NS
0161 286 1926
www.sochealth.co.uk

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Dr Axel Kaehne
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