The articles in this issue highlight contributions that studies of Latin America can make to wider debates about the effects of genomic science on public ideas about race and nation. We argue that current ideas about the power of genomics to transfigure and transform existing ways of thinking about human diversity are often overstated. If a range of social contexts are examined, the effects are...

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation-state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a powerful example. However markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced (Ansari, 2005). Using the case of the displaced ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ in Bangladesh this article considers what contemporary discourses of i...

OBJECTIVE We sought to compare the relationship between body composition, insulin resistance, and inflammatory adipokines in Aboriginal Canadian women, who are at high risk of vascular disease, with white women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A subgroup of the First Nations Bone Health Study population, consisting of 131 Aboriginal women and 132 matched white women, was utilized. Body compositio...

The nation-state of Sierra Leone crumbled during the 1990s. A decade-long civil war destroyed the state and brutalized the national imaginings. Despite the lack of institutional structure, some members of its society chose to keep the nation alive through discourse on a listserv, an email forum called Leonenet. Using a multi-methodological approach that incorporated content analysis, interviews...

CONTEXT Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a major public health concern and has reached epidemic proportions in the Canadian First Nation population. Reasons for this epidemic are the consequences of low socioeconomic status, and challenges to screening, primary prevention, management and access to care. ISSUE This article presents the authors' opinions of the healthcare needs specific to the First Na...

While there has been an improvement in some dimensions of immigrant labour market perf o r mance over time, immigrants of non-English speaking background are carrying an incre a s i n g l y inequitable burden of unemployment in the 1990s compared with the 1970s. This is particularly the case for women, young people and refugees. In short, the gap in unemployment rates betwe e n the Australian b...