Background and Aims:There is a paucity of data on the safety of joint replacement surgery in patients with inflammatory bowel disease [IBD], including those on tumour necrosis factor-alpha inhibitors [anti-TNF]. We explored the risk of serious infections in this population. Methods: A retrospective case-control study [2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012][2013][2014] was performed using the MarketScan Database. All patients aged 18-64 years with an International Classification of Diseases code for IBD and an IBD-specific medication, with ≥ 6 months of enrollment prior to hip, knee or shoulder replacement surgery, were included. Ten non-IBD controls were frequency-matched to each case on length of enrollment, year and the joint replaced. Primary outcome was serious infection [composite of joint infection, surgical site infection, pneumonia, sepsis] within 90 days of the operation. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association of IBD and IBD medications with serious infection. Results: More patients with IBD [N = 1455] had serious infections than controls [3.2% vs 2.3%, p = 0.04], but not after controlling for comorbidities (hazard ratio [HR], 1.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.95-1.76). Among IBD patients, corticosteroids were associated with increased risk of serious infection [HR, 4.6; 95% CI,; p < 0.01] while anti-TNFs were not. Opioids were also associated with increased risk of infection [HR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2-1.8; p < 0.01]. Conclusions: After controlling for comorbidities, IBD patients were not at increased risk of serious infection following joint replacement. Corticosteroids, but not anti-TNFs or immunomodulators, were associated with increased risk of serious infections in IBD patients.

Although Bourdieu's sociological project is a generalised sociology of religion, his work has not been as influential among sociologists of religion as one might have expected it to be. In this paper we provide an overview of Bourdieu's analysis of religion, paying particular attention to key problems that have been identified in the literature, and suggesting how his work can be understood in such a way as to overcome these limitations. Drawing upon research by two of the authors of this current paper, we show how Bourdieu's sociology is helpful for understanding the conflicts over sexuality in the Anglican Communion.

Orenstein's (2002) JSSR article " Religion and Paranormal Belief" uses Reginald Bibby's 1995 Project Canada data to argue that religious and paranormal belief are positively correlated, but that church attendance and paranormal belief are negatively correlated. In this response, I use the same data to show that while his basic model is true, we also need to consider the interaction between church attendance and religious belief. Religious attendance conditions the effect of religious beliefs on paranormal beliefs in an important fashion. I find that religious and paranormal belief are positively correlated, but only for those who do not attend church regularly.

Although scholars have long recognized the importance of “elective affinity” as a key word in Weber's sociology, surprisingly little systematic research has gone into understanding this metaphor in Weber's writing, or the source from which he drew the term. For Weber, this was an implicit reference to Goethe's novel, well known to Weber's educated German audience, entitled Elective Affinities (1807). In this article, I provide a systematic account of Goethe's conception of elective affinity as a chemical metaphor, and of the way that it is related to Weber's uses of the term in the Protestant ethic essays and in his critical rejoinders. By understanding elective affinity as a Goethean chemical metaphor we can better understand the causal claims that Weber makes in his famous essay: Weber's argument is best understood as an analysis of emergence in the chemistry of social relations.

This is the premise of a Marxian analysis of religion: "Religion…is the opium of the people". But what does it mean to equate religion with opium? For most twenty-first century readers, opium means something quite simple and obvious, and the comparison between the two terms seems perfectly literal. Opium is a drug that kills pain, distorts reality, and an artificial source of solace to which some poor souls can become addicted; so also religion. Friedrich Nietzsche argues that the 'true' or literal meaning of a word is one "to which one has become accustomed due to frequent use… a metaphor…whose metaphorical nature has been forgotten" (1995:72). Through the "interminable repetition" of the phrase in Marxian analyses of religion (O'Toole 1984:68), "opium of the people" has lost its metaphorical sense. Even when readers of "Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction" encounter the text as a dialectical analysis of religion, their understanding is governed-and loses its dialectical force-by a literal and presentist reading of this central metaphor. In what is quite possibly the greatest work of Marxist literary theory, Frederic Jameson argues that ...texts come before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend [them] through sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or-if the text is brand-new