Social facts

Laurie, P. Drugs Medical, Psychological and Social Facts. Middlesex, England Penguin, 1967. 

For a remarkably thoughtful and thorough examination of how the colonial legal code transformed land-dispute settlement, land tenure, and social structure, see Sally Falk Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications "Customary Law on Mount Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1986). 

This point is made exceptionally well, both empirically and analjtically, in Sally Falk Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications, especially chap. 6. 

Hydro-electricity is the most developed renewable resource worldwide, even if it has to face social and environmental barriers [29]. In fact societal preferences are difficult to predict, while hydro-sites are often difficult to reach, which results in high transmission and capital investment costs. These are difficult to be accepted by private power companies. The global economic hydropower potential ranges between 7000 and 9000 TWh per year. Particularly mral communities without electricity appear to be convenient for small (<10 MWe), mini- (<1 MWe), and micro- (<100 kWe) scale hydro schemes. They have low environmental impacts, and generation costs are around 6-12 c/kWh. Emissions of GHG linked with hydro-electricity operation are due to flooding of land upstream of a dam that can imply a loss of biological carbon stocks and can produce methane emissions due to vegetation decomposition. 

The results regarding socioeconomic gradients undermines the hypothesis that the principal social class influence on health is material deprivation. In fact, the social class gradient in health cuts deeply into the affluent middle classes. The implication is that the conditions under which people live can affect human health directly, and not only through material deprivation. Early childhood experience, one s place in the social environment, and the experiences of daily life must be powerful determinants of the length and healthfulness of life (Kelly et al., 1997, p. 438). 

Fred Tauber I was struck by the comment that you made and which I ve thought about also in regards to putting the onus of responsibility on the individual. One can turn the table and look at it in another way that the individual in fact is biologically determined and so is not responsible, and therefore social constraints, social policy, etc., then have to be imposed in order to adjudicate the biological bad effect, if you will, on culture. 

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