I dentifying critical issues confronting an urban sociology of the twenty-first century entails a decision and a judgment, both in turn inevitably derived from an interpretation of history in the making. The enterprise is, thus, partial and positioned. Developing analytical and empirical elements (and I emphasize elements) for an urban sociology focused on the early twenty-first century does no...

Australia is undoubtably a nation rich with opportunities, with extensive social and economic infrastructure, stable and responsible government, and abundant natural and developed resources. But Australia also faces some significant challenges, including reducing unacceptably high levels of unemployment, managing environmental concerns, and responding effectively to global competition and struc...

BACKGROUND Primary care research is at a crossroad in South Pacific. A steering committee comprising a member of WONCA Asia Pacific Regional (APR) council and the President of Fiji College of General Practitioners garnered sponsorship from Fiji Ministry of Health, WONCA APR and pharmaceutical agencies to organize the event in October 2013. This paper describes the processes needed to set up a n...

Within the context of developing creativity discourse and policy, this paper begins by exploring a number of the tensions that emerged from research using an interdisciplinary framework to investigate creativity with English expert specialist dance teachers. The paper then interrogates and articulates the productive dynamics of one of these tensions that occur between individual, collaborative ...

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest amongst donors in investing in the health sectors of fragile and conflict-affected states, although there is limited research evidence and research funding to support this. Agreeing priority areas is therefore critical. This paper describes an 18-month process to develop a consultative research agenda and questions for health systems research, providing r...

In an important article on the state of European Union (EU) foreign policy research, Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire show that academics excessively focus on the study of the EU foreign policy system and EU implementation rather than the consequences of EU foreign policy for recipient countries. While the article is empirical, based on a dataset of 451 published articles on EU foreign policy, th...

The theme 'patient-centred interprofessional collaboration' of the EGPRN conference in October 2012, captures in just three words important challenges for European primary care and its research agenda. Challenges for future research are formulated, in three domains: clinical, educational and health services research. Transferability of research, based upon advanced computational infrastructure,...

Agenda control in legislative bodies is an important and complicated topic. Frequently, the discussion of agenda control is limited to procedures that restrict what may be considered on the floor, as exemplified by “closed rules” in the United States House of Representatives. In this paper, we expand the discussion of agenda control by considering the effects of predetermining part of an amendm...

background global health policy is created largely through a collaborative process between development agencies and aid-recipient governments, yet it remains unclear whether governments retain ownership over the creation of policy in their own countries. an assessment of the power structure in this relationship and its influence over agenda-setting is thus the first step towards understanding ...