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Precision Community Health: Four Innovations for Well-being
by Bechara ChoucairWhen Bechara Choucair was a young doctor, he learned an important lesson: treating a patient for hypothermia does little good if she has to spend the next night out in the freezing cold. As health commissioner of Chicago, he was determined to address the societal causes of disease and focus the city's resources on its most vulnerable populations. That targeted approach has led to dramatic successes, such as lowering rates of smoking, teen pregnancy, breast cancer mortalities, and other serious ills.In Precision Community Health, Choucair shows how those successes can be replicated and expanded around the country. The key is to use advanced technologies to identify which populations are most at risk for specific health threats and avert crises before they begin. Big data makes precision community health possible. But in our increasingly complex world, we also need new strategies for developing effective coalitions, media campaigns, and policies. This book showcases four innovations that move public health departments away from simply dispensing medical care and toward supporting communities to achieve true well-being.The approach Choucair pioneered in Chicago requires broadening our thinking about what constitutes public health. It is not simply about access to a doctor, but access to decent housing, jobs, parks, food, and social support. It also means acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all strategy may exacerbate inequities. By focusing on those most in need, we create an agenda that is simultaneously more impactful and more achievable. The result is a wholesale change in the way public health is practiced and in the well-being of all our communities.
Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession
by Ander MonsonA searching memoir of a life lived in the flicker of an action film, by the author of I Will Take the Answer In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides readers through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream, white, male American culture. Between scenes, Monson delves deeply into his adolescence in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Riyadh, his role as a father and the loss of his own mother, and his friendships with men bound by the troubled camaraderie depicted in action and sci-fi blockbusters. Along with excursions into the conflicted pleasures of cosplay and first-person shooters, he imagines himself beside the poet and memoirist Paul Monette, who wrote the novelization of the movie while his partner was dying of AIDS.A sincere and playful book that lovingly dissects the film, Predator also offers questions and critiques of masculinity, fandom, and their interrelation with acts of mass violence. In a stirring reversal, one chapter exposes Monson through the Predator’s heat-seeking vision, asking him, “What do you know about the workings of the hidden world?” As Monson brings us into the brilliant depths of the film and its universe, the hunt begins.
Predator: Rape, Madness and Injustice in Seattle
by Jack OlsenJack Olsen, "the master of the true crime book," now gives us an incisive, probing look into the creation and development of the criminal mind, as well as a shocking case of justice gone awry. From childhood, McDonald Smith took to heart the lessons drummed into him by antisocial relatives and peers. As a teenager, unburdened by conscience or pity, he experimented with child abuse and bestiality, then moved on to larceny, stickups, incest, and, finally, rape. Warned by a "witch" that he was about to be arrested, he fled Los Angeles for Seattle and the Northwest--already the breeding ground of predatory monsters like Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi, and the Green River Killer. There, for years, he stalked the women of Seattle, seeking his prey on the dark streets and in the quiet homes, then returning to his wife and family: too careful--and too clever--to be caught. By fall 1980, Mac Smith's luck still held. A respectable young businessman named Steve Titus found himself charged with one of Smith's most sadistic rapes in a nightmarish case of mistaken identity and injustice. The idealistic Titus was certain that the American system of justice would clear him--right up to the day that a jury of his peers returned a verdict of guilty as charged. While Mac Smith continued to terrorize the women of Seattle, Titus lost everything: his reputation, his job, his loved ones, his freedom. It was only when a Pulitzer prizewinning reporter answered Titus's pleas for justice that the terrible truth emerged: a truth that was darker than anyone imagined. Predator is a gripping work of true crime reporting: Jack Olsen doing what he does best. It is a searing study of violations: of women, of justice, of power, and of the human spirit.
Predator Empire: Drone Warfare and Full Spectrum Dominance
by Ian G. ShawWhat does it mean for human beings to exist in an era of dronified state violence? How can we understand the rise of robotic systems of power and domination? Focusing on U.S. drone warfare and its broader implications as no other book has to date, Predator Empire argues that we are witnessing a transition from a labor-intensive &“American empire&” to a machine-intensive &“Predator Empire.&” Moving from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror and beyond, Ian G. R. Shaw reveals how changes in military strategy, domestic policing, and state surveillance have come together to enclose our planet in a robotic system of control. The rise of drones presents a series of &“existential crises,&” he suggests, that are reengineering not only spaces of violence but also the character of the modern state. Positioning drone warfare as part of a much longer project to watch and enclose the human species, he shows that for decades—centuries even—human existence has slowly but surely been brought within the artificial worlds of &“technological civilization.&” Instead of incarcerating us in prisons or colonizing territory directly, the Predator Empire locks us inside a worldwide system of electromagnetic enclosure—in which democratic ideals give way to a system of totalitarian control, a machinic &“rule by Nobody.&” As accessibly written as it is theoretically ambitious, Predator Empire provides up-to-date information about U.S. drone warfare, as well as an in-depth history of the rise of drones.
Predator of the Seas: A History of the Slaveship that Fought for Emancipation
by Stephen TaylorThe dramatic biography of a slaveship turned freedom-fighter—which brings new insights into Britain’s involvement in the end of the trade in enslaved people In 1827 the Royal Navy purchased a Baltimore clipper and renamed her the Black Joke. Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, she patrolled the west coast of Africa and freed 3,692 captives from enslavement. Beloved by seafarers and celebrated by the public, the Black Joke would become the most famous weapon in the campaign for abolition. But in her previous life as the Henriqueta, the Black Joke had been a slave ship. Through the experiences of slavers and abolitionists, captives and crew, Stephen Taylor charts the vessel’s extraordinary double life. As the Henriqueta she operated as an engine of atrocity, trafficking over 3,000 captives to plantations in Brazil. But subsequently manned by British seamen and Liberian Kru, the Black Joke became the scourge of Spanish and Brazilian slavers. She did so despite limited resources, neglect, and even obstruction by the authorities at home. Taylor offers a gripping account of the world of the transatlantic trade, through the eyes of its perpetrators—and those who sought its end.
Predator's Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders
by Connie BruckDuring the '80s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham created the corporate raiders. He was the billionaire Junk Bond King. But, in the corner stood the U.S. District Attorney waiting to file criminal and racketeering charges.
Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future
by Anita Say ChanThe first book to draw a direct line between the datafication and prediction techniques of past eugenicists and today's often violent and extractive "big data" regimes. Predatory Data illuminates the throughline between the nineteenth century's anti-immigration and eugenics movements and our sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination. With this book, Anita Say Chan offers a historical, globally multisited analysis of the relations of dispossession, misrecognition, and segregation expanded by dominant knowledge institutions in the Age of Big Data. While technological advancement has a tendency to feel inevitable, it always has a history, including efforts to chart a path for alternative futures and the important parallel story of defiant refusal and liberatory activism. Chan explores how more than a century ago, feminist, immigrant, and other minoritized actors refused dominant institutional research norms and worked to develop alternative data practices whose methods and traditions continue to reverberate through global justice-based data initiatives today. Looking to the past to shape our future, this book charts a path for an alternative historical consciousness grounded in the pursuit of global justice. A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race
by Jemima PierreWhat is the meaning of blackness in Africa? While much has been written on Africa's complex ethnic and tribal relationships, Jemima Pierre's groundbreaking The Predicament of Blackness is the first book to tackle the question of race in West Africa through its postcolonial manifestations. Challenging the view of the African continent as a nonracialized space--as a fixed historic source for the African diaspora--she envisions Africa, and in particular the nation of Ghana, as a place whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics. Against the backdrop of Ghana's history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent and disruptive forces of colonialism and postcolonialism, Pierre examines key facets of contemporary Ghanaian society, from the pervasive significance of "whiteness" to the practice of chemical skin-bleaching to the government's active promotion of Pan-African "heritage tourism. " Drawing these and other examples together, she shows that race and racism have not only persisted in Ghana after colonialism, but also that the beliefs and practices of this modern society all occur within a global racial hierarchy. In doing so, she provides a powerful articulation of race on the continent and a new way of understanding contemporary Africa--and the modern African diaspora.
The Predicament of Culture
by James CliffordThe Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late-twentieth century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.
Predictable Pleasures: Food and the Pursuit of Balance in Rural Yucatán (At Table)
by Lauren A. WynneThe pursuit of balance pervades everyday life in rural Yucatán, Mexico, from the delicate negotiations between a farmer and the neighbor who wants to buy his beans to the careful addition of sour orange juice to a rich plate of eggs fried in lard. Based on intensive fieldwork in one indigenous Yucatecan community, Predictable Pleasures explores the desire for balance in this region and the many ways it manifests in human interactions with food. As shifting social conditions, especially a decline in agriculture and a deepening reliance on regional tourism, transform the manners in which people work and eat, residents of this community grapple with new ways of surviving and finding pleasure. Lauren A. Wynne examines the convergence of food and balance through deep analysis of what locals describe as acts of care. Drawing together rich ethnographic data on how people produce, exchange, consume, and talk about food, this book posits food as an accessible, pleasurable, and deeply important means by which people in rural Yucatán make clear what matters to them, finding balance in a world that seems increasingly imbalanced. Unlike many studies of globalization that point to the dissolution of local social bonds and practices, Predictable Pleasures presents an array of enduring values and practices, tracing their longevity to the material constraints of life in rural Yucatán, the deep historical and cosmological significance of food in this region, and the stubborn nature of bodily habits and tastes.
Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dr Dan Ariely"A marvelous book… thought provoking and highly entertaining." —Jerome Groopman, New York Times bestselling author of How Doctors Think "Ariely not only gives us a great read; he also makes us much wiser." —George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics "Revolutionary." —New York Times Book Review Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.
Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan (Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster)
by Kerry SmithJapan is a place where powerful earthquakes have occurred more frequently and have caused more harm in the modern era than they have in all but a handful of other locations on the planet. In the twentieth century alone, earthquake disasters in Japan took almost as many lives as they had in all of the country’s recorded history up to that point. Predicting Disasters is the first English-language book to explore how scientists convinced policy makers and the public in postwar Japan that catastrophic earthquakes were coming, and the first to show why earthquake prediction has played such a central role in Japan’s efforts to prepare for a dangerous future ever since.Kerry Smith shows how, in the twentieth century, scientists struggled to make large-scale earthquake disasters legible to the public and to policy makers as significant threats to Japan’s future and as phenomena that could be anticipated and prepared for. Smith also explains why understanding those struggles matters. Disasters, Smith contends, belong alongside more familiar topics of analysis in modern Japanese history—such as economic growth and its impacts, political crises and popular protest, and even the legacies of the war—for the work they do in helping us better understand how the past has influenced beliefs about Japan’s possible futures, and how beliefs about the future shape the present.Predicting Disasters makes relevant elements of Japan’s past more accessible to readers interested in the histories of disaster and scientific communities, as well as to those who want to gain a better understanding of the risk and uncertainty surrounding natural phenomena.
The Prediction and Control of Organized Crime: The Experience of Post-Soviet Ukraine
by Jennifer SchrockLike most former Soviet republics, Ukraine has experienced a formidable proliferation of crime and corruption as it struggles with economic reform and the establishment of democracy.During the early 90s, Ukraine became one of the primary recipients of foreign assistance from the United States and its crime and corruption situation was increasingly seen as an impediment to economic transition and achieving a more democratic way of life. Thus in 1998, as part of a larger U.S. law enforcement assistance effort in Ukraine, the idea for a research partnership between criminologists and legal scholars in the two countries was born in this volume.The original research papers contained are the products of this ambitious research project. The realities of crime in post-Soviet Ukraine, as well as divergent methodological approaches and communication problems, presented the research partners with enormous challenges. This volume represents the culmination of that collaborative effort, and provides a singular look into the current crime situation in Ukraine, and into the potential global threat presented by Ukrainian organized crime.Contributions include analyses of the prediction and control of organized crime, trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation, international money laundering, the transnational political criminal nexus of trafficking in women, countermeasures against economic crime and corruption, heroin trafficking, business victimization by organized crime, and understanding and combating organized crime. The Prediction and Control of Organized Crime will be critical reading for security planners, policymakers, and criminal justice officials, as well as comparative criminologists, legal scholars, and political scientists interested in organized crime and political corruption.
Prediction and Inference from Social Networks and Social Media
by Jalal Kawash Nitin Agarwal Tansel ÖzyerThis book addresses the challenges of social network and social media analysis in terms of prediction and inference. The chapters collected here tackle these issues by proposing new analysis methods and by examining mining methods for the vast amount of social content produced. Social Networks (SNs) have become an integral part of our lives; they are used for leisure, business, government, medical, educational purposes and have attracted billions of users. The challenges that stem from this wide adoption of SNs are vast. These include generating realistic social network topologies, awareness of user activities, topic and trend generation, estimation of user attributes from their social content, and behavior detection. This text has applications to widely used platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and appeals to students, researchers, and professionals in the field.
Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
by Ajay Agrawal Joshua Gans Avi GoldfarbArtificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible, magically bringing machines to life--driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future. But in this book, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science
by Edward W. FreesPredictive modeling involves the use of data to forecast future events. It relies on capturing relationships between explanatory variables and the predicted variables from past occurrences and exploiting this to predict future outcomes. Forecasting future financial events is a core actuarial skill - actuaries routinely apply predictive-modeling techniques in insurance and other risk-management applications. This book is for actuaries and other financial analysts who are developing their expertise in statistics and wish to become familiar with concrete examples of predictive modeling. The book also addresses the needs of more seasoned practising analysts who would like an overview of advanced statistical topics that are particularly relevant in actuarial practice. Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science emphasizes lifelong learning by developing tools in an insurance context, providing the relevant actuarial applications, and introducing advanced statistical techniques that can be used by analysts to gain a competitive advantage in situations with complex data.
Predictive Policing and Artificial Intelligence (Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice)
by McDaniel, John L.M.This edited text draws together the insights of numerous worldwide eminent academics to evaluate the condition of predictive policing and artificial intelligence (AI) as interlocked policy areas. Predictive and AI technologies are growing in prominence and at an unprecedented rate. Powerful digital crime mapping tools are being used to identify crime hotspots in real-time, as pattern-matching and search algorithms are sorting through huge police databases populated by growing volumes of data in an eff ort to identify people liable to experience (or commit) crime, places likely to host it, and variables associated with its solvability. Facial and vehicle recognition cameras are locating criminals as they move, while police services develop strategies informed by machine learning and other kinds of predictive analytics. Many of these innovations are features of modern policing in the UK, the US and Australia, among other jurisdictions.AI promises to reduce unnecessary labour, speed up various forms of police work, encourage police forces to more efficiently apportion their resources, and enable police officers to prevent crime and protect people from a variety of future harms. However, the promises of predictive and AI technologies and innovations do not always match reality. They often have significant weaknesses, come at a considerable cost and require challenging trade- off s to be made. Focusing on the UK, the US and Australia, this book explores themes of choice architecture, decision- making, human rights, accountability and the rule of law, as well as future uses of AI and predictive technologies in various policing contexts. The text contributes to ongoing debates on the benefits and biases of predictive algorithms, big data sets, machine learning systems, and broader policing strategies and challenges.Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of policing, criminology, crime science, sociology, computer science, cognitive psychology and all those interested in the emergence of AI as a feature of contemporary policing.
Predictive Policing and The Construction of The 'Criminal': An Ethnographic Study of Delhi Police (Palgrave's Critical Policing Studies)
by Shivangi NarayanThis book provides a cultural investigation of the police in India and how it uses data and algorithmic tools for crime mapping.The book draws on an ethnographic study of Delhi Police's hotspot mapping endeavour. It provides a sociological investigation of the police in India and how they use data and algorithmic tools for crime mapping. It discusses how ‘criminals’ are constructed in these systems, typically, the marginalised residents of slums and immigrant colonies. It explores how the algorithm reifies existing assumptions and prejudices about 'criminals' as artificial intelligence systems are deeply intertwined with the culture and beliefs of those who make and use them. It pays special attention to the discriminatory practices of relevant police officers and how this ‘predictive’ policing perpetuates harm to the most marginalised. This book contributes to discussions around big data and surveillance studies broadly.
The Predictive Postcode: The Geodemographic Classification of British Society
by Richard Webber Professor Roger BurrowsIt is not lost on commercial organisations that where we live colours how we view ourselves and others. That is why so many now place us into social groups on the basis of the type of postcode in which we live. Social scientists call this practice “commercial sociology”. Richard Webber originated Acorn and Mosaic, the two most successful geodemographic classifications. Roger Burrows is a critical interdisciplinary social scientist. Together they chart the origins of this practice and explain the challenges it poses to long-established social scientific beliefs such as: the role of the questionnaire in an era of “big data” the primacy of theory the relationship between qualitative and quantitative modes of understanding the relevance of visual clues to lay understanding. To help readers evaluate the validity of this form of classification, the book assesses how well geodemographic categories track the emergence of new types of residential neighbourhood and subject a number of key contemporary issues to geodemographic modes of analysis.
The Predictive Postcode: The Geodemographic Classification of British Society
by Richard Webber Professor Roger BurrowsIt is not lost on commercial organisations that where we live colours how we view ourselves and others. That is why so many now place us into social groups on the basis of the type of postcode in which we live. Social scientists call this practice “commercial sociology”. Richard Webber originated Acorn and Mosaic, the two most successful geodemographic classifications. Roger Burrows is a critical interdisciplinary social scientist. Together they chart the origins of this practice and explain the challenges it poses to long-established social scientific beliefs such as: the role of the questionnaire in an era of “big data” the primacy of theory the relationship between qualitative and quantitative modes of understanding the relevance of visual clues to lay understanding. To help readers evaluate the validity of this form of classification, the book assesses how well geodemographic categories track the emergence of new types of residential neighbourhood and subject a number of key contemporary issues to geodemographic modes of analysis.
Predictive Technology in Social Media
by Cristina Fernández-RoviraCan behaviour on social media predict future purchase patterns? Can what we click on social media foresee which political party will we vote for? Can the information we share on our wall foretell the next series I might want to watch? Can the likes on Instagram and Facebook predict the time one will spend on digital platforms in the next hour? The answer is no longer science fiction. It points to the ability of mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to be able to deliver specialised advertising services to highly targeted audience segments controlled by the billions of devices that flood our daily lives. At the same time, it highlights a more relevant problem: can social media guide, suggest or impose a certain behaviour or thought? Everything seems to indicate that they can do it.Predictive Technology in Social Media comprises 10 essays that reflect on the power of the predictive technology of social media in culture, entertainment, marketing, economics and politics. It shows, from a humanistic and critical perspective, the predictive possibilities of social media platforms, as well as the risks this entails for cultural plurality, everyday consumption, the monopolistic concentration of the economy and attention, and democracy. The text is an invitation to think, as citizens, about the unbridled power we have ceded to digital platforms. A new voice to warn about the greatest concentration of communicative power ever seen in the history of humanity.
The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century (New Directions in Book History)
by Ross K. TangedalBuilding on insights from the fields of textual criticism, bibliography, narratology, authorship studies, and book history, The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century examines the role that prefaces played in the development of professional authorship in America. Many of the prefaces written by American writers in the twentieth century catalogue the shifting landscape of a more self-consciously professionalized trade, one fraught with tension and compromise, and influenced by evolving reading publics. With analyses of Willa Cather, Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Penn Warren, and Toni Morrison, Ross K. Tangedal argues that writers used prefaces as a means of expanding and complicating authority over their work and, ultimately, as a way to write about their careers. Tangedal’s approach offers a new way of examining American writers in the evolving literary marketplace of the twentieth century.
Preference Organisation and Peer Disputes: How Young Children Resolve Conflict (Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis)
by Amelia ChurchHow do children get their own way in arguments? What is the most effective way of pursuing one's own goals in preschool? 'Use your words' is an instruction frequently heard in nurseries and pre-schools encouraging young children to resolve the situation through verbal rather than physical means. Discourse is seen as the solution, yet, what words are the children supposed to use, and how do they go about resolving disputes? This fascinating book offers a conversation analysis of children's arguments, revealing disputing as a highly ordered, rule-governed activity, even amongst very young children. The author provides a rich theoretical discussion of the work in speech acts and conversational analysis, whilst offering a sophisticated review in relation to children's culture. It will be of great interest to conversation analysts within sociology and linguistics, as well as to educationalists and scholars of childhood.
Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare
by Daniel M. HausmanThis book is about preferences, principally as they figure in economics. It also explores their uses in everyday language and action, how they are understood in psychology and how they figure in philosophical reflection on action and morality. The book clarifies and for the most part defends the way in which economists invoke preferences to explain, predict and assess behavior and outcomes. Hausman argues, however, that the predictions and explanations economists offer rely on theories of preference formation that are in need of further development, and he criticizes attempts to define welfare in terms of preferences and to define preferences in terms of choices or self-interest. The analysis clarifies the relations between rational choice theory and philosophical accounts of human action. The book also assembles the materials out of which models of preference formation and modification can be constructed, and it comments on how reason and emotion shape preferences.
Pregnancy and Birth in Russia: The Struggle for "Good Care" (Social Science Perspectives on Childbirth and Reproduction)
by Anna Temkina Anastasia Novkunskaya Daria LitvinaThis book provides a theoretically and empirically grounded examination of the struggle for maternity care in contemporary Russia, framed by changes to the healthcare system and the roles of its participants after socialism. The chapters consider multiple perspectives and interactions between women and professionals and the structural and institutional pressures they face when striving for better conditions and treatment. Russian maternity care is characterized by the vivid mix of legacy of Soviet paternalism and medicalization, bureaucratic principles of state regulation (with high level of centralization and lack of professional autonomy) and global neoliberal tendencies. Maternity care professionals have to satisfy not only the growing needs and demands of women, but also deal with increasing state regulative control, market demands and new professional standards of care. Navigating these multiple and various challenges, maternity providers have to perform in multiple roles, bridge the organizational gaps and inconsistencies. Thus, the field of struggle for good care becomes not only professional, but political one. Highlighting the opportunities and barriers for good care in the context of post-socialist Russia, this book will be of particular interest to medical anthropologists and sociologists as well as midwives and other health professionals.