bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Turning the Car Inside Out: Transport, Equity and Environment
Authors: Jain Juliet , Guiver Jo
Published: March 2003

“Turning the car inside out” describes how the environmental damage and social exclusion inflicted by the car can only be seen from outside the car. It explains how car use has reshaped land, time use, social relations and economic patterns. It creates ever more pressures for increased car use, yet inevitably leaves the people temporarily or permanently excluded from cars having to negotiate car distances and times. The worst scenario of car saturation is rejected as untenable both because of the permanent social and environmental impact, but also the self‐defeating nature of the quest for mobility.
Rurality in England and Wales 1991: A Replication and Extension of the 1981 Rurality Index
Authors: Harrington Vicki , O’Donoghue Dan
Published: March 2003

This paper sets out to create rurality indexes for 222 non‐urban Local Authority Districts (LADs) in England and Wales 1991, replicating the earlier work of Cloke (1977) and Cloke and Edwards (1986) for 1971 and 1981 respectively. The same technique is employed to generate the rurality indices for 1991 as that used by those previous researchers. The results for 1991 are then compared to those for 1981, illustrating the robustness of the rurality index. Despite the robustness of the rurality index, it was felt that too much of the variation in rurality was left unexplained by the previous construction. Therefore, principal components analysis is used to identify two new dimensions of rurality: Structural Rurality and Demographic Rurality. The remainder of the paper investigates the ways in which these new, or additional, indices of rurality may prove useful to the further study of change in rural areas of England and Wales.
Cracking the Glass Ceiling: The Story of the Election Process in the Norwegian Farmers Union in 1997
Authors: Verstad Berit
Published: March 2003

The main issue in this article is whether cracking the glass ceiling of the Norwegian Farmers Union indicates a ‘new’ organization based on equal opportunities between the sexes. By way of illustration, different meanings of gender and leadership embedded in the rhetoric and arguments produced in the process leading to the election of the first woman president are analysed. The rhetorics expressed by the press, the election committee and the candidates are deconstructed. The analysis indicates that the organization is becoming less discriminatory, and that both women’s and men’s range of possibilities have increased. The gender perspective suggests that concrete changes depend on who participates in the discussions, their perception of gender, their conceptions of leadership, and their visions for the organization.
Born to be Farmers? Changing Expectations in Norwegian Farmers’ Life Courses
Authors: Villa Mariann
Published: March 2003

The article explores how the general processes of individualization might be found within farmers’ culture. This article focuses on three generations of Norwegian farmers’ entry into farming, their views of their present situation as farmers, and their views on succession. In‐depth interviews were carried out with sixteen farmers, exploring their special mode of living and how it has changed over generations. This is related to being born farmers and the challenge to this position due to social development in general, and becoming a minority in rural society in particular. The farmers’ stories illustrate a change from farming as an occupation you were obliged to carry on, to farming as one option among many. At the same time, there is an increasingly expression of the need for autonomy between generations and the nuclear family on the farm. The theoretical approaches are built upon the perspectives of life mode and life course analyses. Life mode analysis emphasizes cultural and economic structures as acting upon peoples’ everyday lives, while a life course approach adds more consideration to processes and changes, as well as the impact of human agency throughout the life course.
Rural Futures: The Consumption Countryside and its Regulation
Authors: Marsden Terry
Published: March 2003

The paper outlines some of the main features of the ‘political and social economy of rural space’ from a British perspective. It details the trajectory of what is termed the ‘consumption countryside’ that is, the sets of increasingly diverse ruralities which tie rural space and people to the provision of goods and services that can be consumed by those in and beyond their particular boundaries. These trends have significance for the development of European rural social science; and particularly the development of a comparative rural sociology which can analyse the differentiation of rural space. In doing so, the paper suggests the need to forge a critical and interpretative set of new relations with the state (supra, national and, regional and local), and to play a much more engaging part in the differential evolution of new rural governance structures.
Modernizing the Savage: Colonization and Perceptions of Landscape and Lifescape
Authors: Gasteyer Stephen P. , Butler Flora Cornelia
Published: March 2003

The processes of colonization and landscape reconfiguration are often discussed as related, but separate, issues. In this paper we demonstrate that these issues are linked and are important in understanding the relationship between land use, culture, ideology and society. An important part of the colonization project is the perception of land as barren, infertile and/or unsafe (evidenced in the connotations of land descriptions such as desert, bog, wilderness) and the people on it as non‐existent and/or savage. Thus heroic, military incursion would be necessary for initial settlement. Case studies of the Midwestern United States, Patagonia in Argentina, and Palestine demonstrate how the colonization project has led to the transformation of the landscape and the oppression (and often removal) of the indigenous population. In all three places the land was defined by the encroaching regimes as empty, barren and dangerous. That definition justified military‐style incursions and massive land transformation projects, such as draining wetlands and large‐scale irrigation of deserts, in the name of modernization to make the land more habitable. In all three areas there was relatively equitable land distribution initially, waves of migration in and out of the area, and export‐based agricultural production. Findings from historical analysis and field research demonstrate how social capital is built around perceptions of the landscape for colonizers and colonized. For colonizers, by interpreting the land as harsh and the natives as savage they developed a unification of purpose in achieving a dominion over both. For the colonized, in this case Palestinians, American Plains Indians, and Mapuche Indians, the recognition of a greater integration with nature is serving as a unifying element in their struggle for indigenous rights.
Reading the Space of the Framers 'Market:A Case Study from the United Kingdom
Authors: Holloway Lewis , Kneafsey Moya
Published: March 2003

The aim of this paper is to begin to examine the emergence of Farmers’ Markets (FM)in the UK. It is suggested that FM represent a new type of ‘consumption space’ within the contemporary British foodscape, one which may be read as a heterotopic convergence of localist, moral, ethical and environmental discourses,mediated by networks of producers, consumers and institutions. Based on a preliminary analysis of some of the discourses employed by these actors,it is argued that FM can be understood simultaneously as ‘conservative’ and ‘alternative’ spaces. ‘Conservative’ in that they encapsulate a reactionary valorization of the local,linking localness to the ideas of quality, health and rurality, and ‘alternative’ in that they represent a diversifying rural economy arising in response to the difficulties being experienced by some uk farmers and a more general perception of a countryside under threat. Initial evidence from a pilot case study in Stratford‐upon‐Avon is used to support these suggestions and propose suggestions for future research.
Rural Community Life and the Importance of Reciprocal Survival Strategies
Authors: Meert Henk
Published: March 2003

Although Belgian poverty is mainly concentrated in urban regions, the profound restructuring of labour and food markets, the dismantling of the welfare state and the growth of new types of households are also producing poverty and social exclusion in rural areas. This paper stresses that not every deprived rural household should be regarded as excluded from society. By developing survival strategies, households attempt to escape from social marginalization. To understand these responses, a typology of survival strategies is constructed, based on Polanyi’s spheres of economic integration (market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity). These survival strategies, including agricultural and non‐agricultural activities, are analysed in relation to the Hageland,a peripheral rural area in Flanders. Based upon Doreen Massey’s geological metaphor, the current potentials and obstacles embedded in the historical layers of the socio‐spatial structure of the area, are assessed. By comparing the results of this research with similar research amongst urban households, some particularities of rural poverty are distinguished.
Ontology Matters: The Relational Materiality of Nature and Agro‐Food Studies
Authors: Goodman David
Published: March 2003

This paper examines the question of ontological choice in agro‐food studies, and emphasizes that such choices are consequential, determining analytical points of entry, arenas of theory and praxis, and normative positioning. These questions are explored by examining the privileged place of the labour process in the development of agro‐food studies and, as a more specific illustration, in analyses of agro‐biotechnology. It is suggested that the modernist ontological priorities embedded in the unreconstructed conceptualization of the labour process not only have been ignored but also have found an unexamined place in post‐structuralist agrarian political economy. The discussion closes by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of actor‐network theory as an alternative avenue of critical engagement with the ‘new’ bio‐politics of agro‐food networks.
A Matter of Life and Death? Men, Masculinities and Staying ‘Behind’ in Rural Ireland
Authors: Laoire Caitríona Ní
Published: March 2003

This paper is set within the context of a growing interest in the gendered nature of rurality and of rural life, and in particular in the context of an emerging literature on rural masculinities. It focuses on rural men and in particular on the phenomenon of rising male rural suicide rates. The paper reviews existing research in order to ascertain the validity of popular claims of high and rising suicide rates among young men in rural Ireland, and explores possible explanations for this phenomenon. It draws on medical and psychological literature but sets this material in a wider geographical context, focusing on processes of contemporary rural restructuring and the oft‐cited masculinity crisis. The paper concludes that in order to understand the processes behind rising male suicide rates, we need to understand the struggles for power and identity that are going on in places, and the movements of people in and out of places. Therefore geography and gender studies can contribute to a greater understanding of the phenomenon, suggesting that this is an area that merits further interdisciplinary research.
Farmer Participation in Agri‐Environmental Schemes: Towards Conservation‐Oriented Thinking?
Authors: Wilson Geoff A. , Hart Kaley
Published: March 2003

This paper argues that the possible shift towards conservation‐oriented attitudes of farmers through agri‐environmental scheme participation should be seen as a key indicator for assessing the ‘effectiveness’ of agri‐environmental policy. Through the analysis of two agri‐environmental schemes in the UK, the ESA and Countryside Stewardship schemes, the study suggests that schemes attract different types of farmers and have different results with regard to shifting farmers' attitudes towards conservation. The paper concludes that there is little evidence yet that the ESA scheme is contributing to changes in farmers' attitudes towards conservation, largely because the scheme is aimed at maintenance rather than change. The Countryside Stewardship scheme, meanwhile, generally enrols more conservation‐oriented farmers and also shows greater potential for shifting farmers' attitudes, mainly because it is aimed at enhancement of wildlife habitats which often require farmers to change farm management practices. Results indicate that future policies should put more emphasis on scheme monitoring and farmer environmental education in order to help move farmers along the conservation spectrum. In the ESA scheme, management agreement tiers that require more substantial changes to farm management practices towards conservation‐oriented farming should be made compulsory in order to ensure that farmers are not only ‘reacting’ to schemes, but that also help farmers re‐think their environmental management practices. The Countryside Stewardship scheme should be further expanded because of its appeal to conservation‐oriented farmers and the resulting potential for sustainable environmental conservation of the countryside.
Exploring the Dimensions of Culture Economies in Rural West Wales
Authors: Kneafsey Moya , Ilbery Brian , Jenkins Tim
Published: March 2003

Many rural areas in developed market economies are now responding to globalization by trying to encourage a relocalization of production and consumption through the establishment of niche markets based on locally embedded skills, resources and knowledges. Such strategies can be theorized as features of a territorially based culture economy. By introducing notions of vertical and horizontal networks into this broad idea, the aim in this paper is to interrogate the nature and extent of the culture economy as a force for rural development in West Wales. The discussion draws on empirical material from research into four different product sectors: speciality beef and lamb, organic fruit, vegetables and meat, speciality cheese and artisanal crafts. Overall, the intention is to demonstrate the importance of considering the specific socio‐cultural and economic contexts within which networks of development are constructed and to suggest that multiple cultural economies operate within and across different localities and sectors.
Organic Farmers in Ontario: An Examination of the Conventionalization Argument
Authors: Hall Alan , Mogyorody Veronika
Published: March 2003

Increasing concerns have been expressed about whether the alternative character of the organic farming movement is being maintained as it grows in size and popularity. This paper examines this question with respect to organic farming in Ontario, Canada. Using survey and case study data, a number of production, marketing, ideology, and farm size characteristics are assessed as indicators of overall conventionalization as well as the bifurcation of organic farming into two distinct groups. While signs of conventionalization and bifurcation are demonstrated, particularly in the area of field crop farming, the overall analysis suggests that most organic farms retain the central features of an alternative approach, including an emphasis on small,diverse,mixed operations, marketing directly and locally to consumers.
Amongst Women: Exploring the Reality of Rural Childcare
Authors: Halliday Joyce , Little Jo
Published: March 2003

In this paper we examine the provision and use of rural childcare, drawing on original data collected as part of a study of formal and informal childcare services in the County of Devon in England. The paper goes beyond existing discussions of childcare in rural areas in attempting to place patterns of use in the broader context of household gender relations and the cultural construction of rurality. We argue that decisions around child care by rural families need to be considered in relation not only to the availability of different sorts of service but also to the employment aspirations and choices of men and women and the assumptions of the primacy of women’s mothering role. Such issues are underpinned, we contest, by idyllic constructions of rural family life and social relations.
‘The Invisible Mouth’: Mobilizing ‘the Consumer’ in Food Production–Consumption Networks
Authors: Lockie Stewart
Published: March 2003

The distanciation of production–consumption relationships in space and time, and the historically productivist bias of social theory, have contributed to the development of sociologies of food production and consumption as largely unrelated academic discourses. Production–based agri–food studies have tended to treat consumption as either a domain of social practice distinct from, but determined by, production, or as a source of ‘demands’ that producers must compete among themselves to meet. Both perspectives fail to deal either with the complexity of food consumption practices or their relationships with practices of food provision. One solution to this problem—informed by actor–network theory and commodity systems analysis—has been the examination of specific commodity chains, or networks, and the material and symbolic transformations that substances undergo as they move from the point of production to the point of ingestion. However, as a number of studies have found, simply adding the hitherto neglected activity of consumption to the end of the commodity chain has proved difficult; this method ultimately favoring the analysis of relatively small chains for niche and specialty foods for which specific actors may unproblematically be identified. This paper argues that while the conceptualization of production–consumption in terms of actor–networks is itself robust, the methodological injunction to simply follow actors through networks is problematic. Additional conceptual and methodological tools are needed that allow an examination of the ways in which actors seek to render others knowable and governable ‘at a distance’; that is, to order diffuse and complex networks. In much the same way, for example, that the point of production has become increasingly invisible to the consumers of industrially produced foods, so too are those ingesting food potentially invisible to its producers. ‘The consumer’ is, however, made knowable and governable through the application of technologies including market research, survey data and point of sale record keeping. Investigation of the ways in which ‘the consumer’ is made knowable within rapidly extending organic food networks illustrates the ways in which ensuing discourses of ‘consumer demand’ are deployed to mobilize actors at multiple points within each network—including the point of ingestion from which this demand is purported to flow.
The Practical Aesthetics of Traditional Cuisines: Slow Food in Tuscany
Authors: Miele Mara , Murdoch Jonathan
Published: March 2003

The paper examines the aestheticisation of food in the context of ‘eating out’ and distinguishes two main aesthetic types: first, an ‘aesthetic of entertainment’ in which food quality is secondary to the restaurant experience; second, a ‘gastronomic aesthetic’ in which the quality of food, notably seasonality and freshness, is seen as primary. Having distinguished the two types, the paper then investigates the second – the gastronomic aesthetic – through the case study of Slow Food in Tuscany. The Slow Food movement seeks to heighten the aesthetic appreciation of typical products and works mainly through local groups and typical restaurants. Through the in–depth analysis of one such restaurant, the paper outlines three main strands in the gastronomic aesthetic: a practical aesthetics of restaurant organisation; an aesthetical–ethic of typical foods; and, an aesthetic of ‘connectedness’ or ‘embeddedness’ in which the food is seen as a reflection of surrounding socio–economic and ecological relationships. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications of the study of aesthetics for rural sociology.
The Final Foods Industry and the Changing Face of the Global Agro–Food System
Authors: Wilkinson John
Published: March 2003

This article focusses on the challenges which current processes of global restructuring represent for the leading food industry firms, exploring, in addition, the hypothesis that both the new bio(techno)logy paradigm and novel patterns of food demand (nutriceuticals, organics) accentuate the vulnerability of firms organised around this link in the global agrofood chain. Two dimensions of the new demand oriented food system which assumed dominance as from the mid–70s can be analytically separated out. The leading food industry players can be said have responded well to the first dimension which involved above all the transition to multi–product demand and innovation oriented firm strategies. The second phase is not so much focused on the diversification of demand as on new contents of demand. These either push food further along the substitutionist trajectory up to the frontier with pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, nutriceuticals and functional foods, or radically challenge industrial transformation, harnessing preservation technologies to the reintroduction of the agricultural product as final food In this second phase the final food sector would appear to be in danger of being squeezed between the extremes of demand and supply. On the one hand, it is largely passive in relation to the drama of the new biotechnology paradigm, and on the other it lacks the nuanced knowledge of global demand made possible by information technology which provides a decisive advantage to retail. This second dimension of the new agro–food system places the future of the traditional giants of the food industry in considerable doubt.
6. Matching with Multiple Controls to Estimate Treatment Effects in Observational Studies
Authors: Smith Herbert L.
Published: March 2003

Matching to control for covariates in the estimation of treatment effects is not common in sociology, where multivariate data are most often analyzed using multiple regression and its generalizations. Matching can be a useful way to estimate these effects, especially when the treatment condition is comparatively rare in a population, and controls are numerous but mostly unlike the treatment cases. Matching on numerous covariates is abetted by the estimation of propensity scores, or functions of the probability that cases are treatments rather than controls. This procedure is illustrated in the estimation of the effects of an organizational innovation on Medicare mortality within hospitals; the data set is very large, but innovative hospitals few, and many of the remaining hospitals are quite unlike the hospitals constituting the treatment sub-sample. Results are based on a variance-components model that is extended to consider the effects of an additional covariate. They show effects of the organizational innovation comparable to those estimated via multiple regression models but with substantially reduced standard errors.
Hard Men, Shop Boys and Others: Embodying Competence in a Masculinist Occupation
Authors: Monaghan Lee F.
Published: March 2003

Emerging studies on private security work in Britain's night-time economy explore important sociological themes such as masculinities and violence. Contributing rich ethnography to this literature, and in furthering an embodied sociology, this paper describes the gendered construction of competency among ‘bouncers’ or door supervisors within the context of their potentially violent work. Centrally, it explores the door supervisors' variable bodily capital (comprising body build and acquired techniques of the body) alongside normative limits to their violence. Here physicality is central to the practicalities of doorwork, risk management and the embodiment of dominant and subordinate masculinities. Within doorwork culture, embodied typifications such as ‘hard men’, ‘shop boys’ and others (eg, ‘bullies’ and ‘nutters’) are related to assessments of possible violence against doorstaff, the delineation of (flexible) boundaries for their own (in)appropriate violence against ‘problematic’ customers and the construction of competent identity. Besides contributing empirical data to the literature this paper underscores the integrative potential of embodiment for social scientists and urges policy makers to appreciate the degree to which (potential) violence is embodied in the night-time economy.
Hyperstructures and the Biology of Interpersonal Dependence: Rethinking Reciprocity and Altruism
Authors: Smith Thomas S. , Stevens Gregory T.
Published: March 2003

Fluctuations in endogenous opioid activity in the brain, controlled under ordinary conditions by attachment, are capable of producing patterns of dependence in social behavior resembling those appearing in substance abusers. Withdrawal symptoms arising in relation to these fluctuations, short of producing dependence, ordinarily fuel everyday social interaction, and interaction then serves to modulate opioid activity within a range associated with comfort. Comfort-constraints in this sense operate in all settings of social interaction, part of an innate caregiving mechanism conserved by evolution in human behavior. In this paper we present a formal model of the neurosociological mechanism embodying these comfort constraints. Conceptualized as a hyperstructure, the mechanism grounds thinking about social interaction in recent biological discoveries about the brain, and enables sociologists to study how activity in core brain systems constrains deep patterns in social life, including the human tendencies to altruism and reciprocity. Using computational methods, we undertake simulations to study the mechanism, deriving implications about moral behavior. The theory of the hyper-structure leads to new conclusions about reciprocity and altruism, and bears upon sociological understanding of related subjects such as justice and social comparison.
The Gatekeeper
Authors: Corra Mamadi , Willer David
Published: March 2003

Gatekeepers control access to benefits that they do not own. When granted access, their clients incur obligations that take the form of fees owed to the gatekeeper. This paper examines a variety of forms that gatekeeping has historically taken, looking closely at the network positions that gatekeepers have occupied. Not previously resolved is what determines the size of the client's obligation. The theory presented here predicts 1) the size of that obligation from the value to the client of the access sought. It also predicts that 2) to benefit, gatekeepers must monopolize their positions, or, failing monopolization, 3) must organize to form a shared monopoly. In exchange networks, gatekeeping takes the form of “ordering,” a new structural power condition. Resistance equations generate exact quantitative values for hypotheses expressing the three predictions above. Experimental tests in the well-understood context of exchange networks offer strong support for the hypotheses.
Bourdieu's Theory of Cultural Change: Explication, Application, Critique
Authors: Gartman David
Published: March 2003

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural change is more powerful and comprehensive than other recent theories, which neglect one or another of the important dimensions of cultural markets. Bourdieu's theory conceptualizes both the supply and demand sides of the market, as well as specifying their interaction with external social factors. Two cases from American culture are developed to demonstrate the explanatory power of Bourdieu's theory of cultural change: the demise of tail fins in automobile design and the fall of modernism in architecture. These cases reveal, however, that Bourdieu's theory fails to account for the leveling of cultural hierarchies and the emergence of pluralized cultural fields. The general conditions for such leveling and pluralization are developed from a comparison of the two cases.
Tanks, Tear Gas, and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression
Authors: Earl Jennifer
Published: March 2003

Despite the importance of research on repression to the study of social movements; few researchers have focused on developing a refined and powerful conceptualization of repression. To address the difficulties such theoretical inattention produces, three key dimensions of repression are outlined and crossed to produce a repression typology. The merit of this typology for researchers is shown by using the typology to: (1) reorganize major research findings on repression; (2) diagnose theoretical and empirical oversights and missteps in the study of repression; and (3) develop new hypotheses about explanatory factors related to repression and relationships between different forms of repression. Such a typology represents an important step toward creating richer theoretical explanations of repression.
Young South Asian deaf people and their families: negotiating relationships and identities1
Authors: Atkin Karl , Ahmad Waqar I.U. , Jones Lesley
Published: March 2003

Abstract This paper explores how various and competing identity claims are negotiated by young deaf people and their families. Our findings, based on group and individual interviews with young South Asian deaf people and individual interviews with their families, illustrate the complex realities of identity negotiation and how this process occurs against the backdrop of ethnicity, religion, gender, racism and deafness. More generally, the structures against which these negotiations take place influence the identity choices to be negotiated. Equally, the struggles to define self‐hood in meaningful and fulfilling ways show agency and ingenuity at work. This helps us to understand a fundamental tension facing young South Asian deaf people as they make sense of their deafness. Deaf culture represented a source of strength and inclusion in a community, which reaffirmed and respected their difference as deaf people, while at the same time denying and undermining their ethnic and religious difference.
‘There are no rights and wrongs in these situations’: identifying interactional difficulties in genetic counselling
Authors: Pilnick Alison
Published: March 2003

Abstract The rapid scientific and technological advances in the field of human genetics have created an ever‐widening gap in knowledge and understanding between those specialists who are involved with them and the general public who are the intended beneficiaries. Genetic counselling is seen as an important way of addressing this gap. Whilst there is a growing literature on genetic counselling, this has tended to focus on quantitative measures of outcome. However, there is a growing recognition that genetic counselling is a communicative process, and needs to be studied as such. This paper presents extracts from a body of data collected at a regional genetic counselling centre, and analysed using a conversation analytic approach. A particular emphasis is placed upon the communication of genetic information by counsellors and the ways in which this is received by clients, and how this impacts upon the ways in which topics for discussion are arrived at. Four areas around which interactional difficulties arise are identified: achieving a client‐led agenda; knowing what is relevant for a particular client; managing different activities within counselling; and managing the multiple perspectives of clients.
‘Why Didn’t You Say Just That?’ Dealing with Issues of Asymmetry, Knowledge and Competence in the Pharmacist/client Encounter
Authors: Pilnick Alison
Published: March 2003

The existence of asymmetry in medical encounters has been discussed many times in previous research, beginning with Parsons’ influential functionalist view of socially prescribed roles for physician and patient. Both theory and research have undergone many transformations since, creating a general agreement amongst conversation analysts that asymmetry is ‘interactively achieved’ rather than imposed (Maynard 1991). However, most of the ‘micro’ sociological literature dealing with asymmetry in doctor/patient consultations is based on episodic encounters, as opposed to long term relationships. Conversation analysts in particular have not tended to focus on long term interactional sequences. The data present here are drawn from a paediatric oncology clinic, which deals with long term cancer and leukaemia patients. These patients make regular visits to the clinic, often over a period of several years, and as such are an unusual group with respect to their knowledge of their conditions and treatment. This paper considers the implications of this with respect to the ‘knowledge‐based asymmetry’ which has been documented in a range of lay‐professional encounters. In so doing, it examines to what extent pharmacists in the clinic constitute their clients as people with expertise and/or knowledge, what difficulties client knowledgeability can create, and how this is managed or pre‐empted within the interaction. In many cases, the knowledge of the patient does appear to ‘diminish’ the interactional symmetry commonly seen in lay/professional encounters to some extent. However, there are still observable incidences of what is termed ‘interactional submission’ by apparently knowledgeable patients or carers during the course of the encounters.
Art, Science and Placebo: Incorporating Homeopathy in General Practice
Authors: May Carl , Sirur Deepak
Published: March 2003

Sociological studies of complementary and alternative therapies have largely focused on the activities and experiences of lay practitioners and users. In contrast, this paper explores some of the ways that a group of medically qualified general practitioners employ homeopathic treatments in their everyday work within the NHS. We explore the ways in which homeopathic medicine accords with an expansive view of the consultation in general practice, and offers doctors a means of avoiding the iatrogenic effects of modern drug treatments. We also point to the ways that this involves practitioners in engaging with contests about the utility of treatments that are rejected by contemporary bioscience.
Social Class or Deprivation? Structural Factors and Children’s Limiting Longstanding Illness in the 1990s
Authors: Cooper Helen , Arber Sara , Smaje Chris
Published: March 2003

This paper investigates inequalities in children’s reported morbidity by parental social class compared with indicators of material disadvantage, using data for children aged 0 to 16 years from the British General Household Surveys for 1991–94. Family structure, employment status and receipt of benefit are more closely associated with differentials in health for children than parental social class. Children in lone parent families living on Income Support are most likely to report chronic illness, whereas for children living with two parents the unemployment of the family head is most clearly associated with reported morbidity. These health inequalities are more pronounced in children under 10 years than children aged 10–16 years. Children living in local authority housing were significantly more likely to report chronic illness. South Asian children were less likely to have a longstanding limiting illness compared to the white population. This research shows that the economic position of the family, and especially material deprivation, is more closely associated with children’s health status than social class.
Mortality, the Social Environment, Crime and Violence
Authors: Wilkinson Richard G. , Kawachi Ichiro , Kennedy Bruce P.
Published: March 2003

Starting out from the relationship between income equality and indicators of social cohesion and social trust, this paper explores the social processes which might account for the relationship between greater income equality and lower population mortality rates. We note that: homicide shows an even closer relationship to income inequality than does mortality from all other causes combined; there are several reports that homicide rates are particularly closely related to all cause mortality; and that there is a growing body of research on crime in relation to social disorganisation.

We use US state level data to examine the relationships between various categories of income inequality, median state income, social trust and mortality. The data suggest that violent crime, but not property crime, is closely related to income inequality, social trust and mortality rates, excluding homicide. The second half of the paper is devoted to literature on the antecedents of violence. Feeling shamed, humiliated and disrespected seem to be central to the picture and are plausibly related to the way in which wider income differences are likely to mean more people are denied access to traditional sources of status and respect. We suggest that these aspects of low social status may be central to the psychosocial processes linking inequality, violence, social cohesion and mortality.
A mirage of genes
Authors: Conrad Peter
Published: March 2003

This paper examines the structure of popular conceptions of the new genetics, and assesses why genetics has been so readily accepted in medicine and in the public discourse. Adapting Rene Dubos’ classic analysis, Mirage of Health, we examine the new genetics by comparing it to Dubos’ analysis of the structure and limits of germ theory. Germ theory focuses on the internal rather than the external environment, emphasises a doctrine of specific aetiology, and adopts the metaphor of the body as a machine. The germ theory model narrowed our vision about disease aetiology, proved misleading in some cases, yet remained the basis for clinical medical models of disease. In recent years, genetics has moved to the cutting edge of medical research and thinking about disease and behaviour. The structure of popular conceptions of the new genetics shows remarkable parallels with germ theory. This has eased the acceptance of genetics but simultaneously raises questions about these genetic explanations. An appearance and allure of specificity privileges genetic explanations in the public discourse; on examination, this specificity may prove to be a mirage.
Review Article: Bodies on a battlefield. The dialectics of disability
Authors: Williams Gareth H.
Published: March 2003

Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer (eds), Doing Disability Research

Len Barton and Mike Oliver (eds), Disability Studies: Past, Present and Future

James I. Charlton, Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability, Oppression and Empowerment

G. Thomas Couser, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability and Life Writing

Wendy Seymour, Remaking the Body: Rehabilitation and Change
Identity and the Social Construction of Risk: Injecting Drug Use
Authors: Plumridge Elizabeth , Chetwynd Jane
Published: March 2003

The links between risk‐taking, identity and social context were examined in interviews with 20 young injecting drug users. Young men proclaimed accounts of identity either as ‘recreational users’ with the heroic personal characteristics to control their drug use, or as ‘junkies’ with traits of sensual hedonism leading inevitably to ever‐increasing drug use. Young women’s accounts were of themselves as ‘junkies’ driven to drug use by psychological pain and addictive personality. Drawing upon individualised explanations of behaviour, these discourses of self identity could nevertheless be seen to be linked to specific social practices: recreational users reported solidarities to maintain low drug use whereas the social scene of ‘junkies’ was not organised around such solidarities. Those who oscillated between recreational use and habitual use had moved across these different social contexts. Theories and practical strategies for harm minimisation, which recognise these relationships between self‐identity, social context and behaviour, are called for.
The human drama of genetics: ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ media representations of inherited breast cancer
Authors: Henderson Lesley , Kitzinger Jenny
Published: March 2003

This paper examines media coverage of ‘breast cancer genetics’, and explores its implications for public understanding. We present a content analysis of coverage in British newspapers and look at a variety of popular forms, including women’s magazines, television soap opera and radio drama. Genetic/inherited risk receives a great deal of coverage across a wide range of media formats and outlets. Much of this attention has focused on individuals from ‘high risk families’ and dilemmas around prophylactic mastectomies. Through examining media coverage, combined with interviews with media personnel and their sources, we show why this story proved so attractive to the media and highlight the different production values which influence coverage. Finally, we introduce preliminary findings from focus group discussions to demonstrate how such ‘human interest’ framing has engaged audience attention and influenced public understandings. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for analysing, predicting, and engaging with, media representations of science.
The gaze and visibility of the carer: a Foucauldian analysis of the discourse of informal care
Authors: Heaton Janet
Published: March 2003

Working from a Foucauldian perspective, this paper examines the discourse of informal care and addresses three questions. When was it first possible to speak of ‘the informal carer’? What are the characteristics of the discourse of informal care? And, what are the conditions of the possibility of the informal carer’s recognition? Following an analysis of the appearance and conceptualisation of the informal carer in policy and related discourse since the 1970s, the visibility of this figure is situated in the context of the historical transformation of the medical gaze. It is argued that two broad axes of the gaze’s ongoing transformation – its devolution to ‘relays’ and its extension to the whole population and the ‘whole person’–underpinned the shift in emphasis from care in the community to care by the community in the 1970s, and the associated development of the discourse of informal care.
A theoretical proposal for the relationship between context and disease
Authors: Frohlich Katherine L. , Corin Ellen , Potvin Louise
Published: March 2003

Studies of ‘context’ are increasingly widespread. These studies often become entrenched in methodological debates rather than being conceptually satisfying. We suggest that part of the problem lies in an inappropriate use of ‘classic’ methods used by epidemiologists to study context and that it may be useful to study, instead, the relationship between agency (the ability for people to deploy a range of causal powers), practices (the activities that make and transform the world we live in) and social structure (the rules and resources in society). We utilise two examples from the current literature to illustrate these problems; the study of lifestyles and social inequalities in disease outcomes. We develop the notion of collective lifestyles as a tentative solution, inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social action, Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory and Amartya Sen’s capability theory. Collective lifestyles are defined as an expression of a shared way of relating and acting in a given environment. It is proposed that context is created by relationships between people.
From Type A man to the hardy man: masculinity and health
Authors: Riska Elianne
Published: March 2003

This article describes the transition in American ‘stress’ literature from a focus on ‘Type A man’ to the ‘hardy man’. These two diagnostic categories were constructed in medical discourse and entailed certain notions of masculinity, class and health. The constructs explained the rise of unhealthy (coronary‐prone) American middle‐class white men in the 1950s and the emergence of healthy men in the same class, race and gender order in the 1970s. I show that the construction of Type A man rested on the medicalisation of the core values of traditional masculinity, while the term ‘hardy man’ demedicalised and legitimised these values.
Towards generous constraint: freedom and coercion in a French addiction treatment
Authors: Gomart Emilie
Published: March 2003

Is the addict a criminal or a patient? Should addicts be approached with coercive means or in such a way that his/her individual freedom is protected? This way of framing the problem of addiction opposes freedom and coercion, care and constraint, activity and subjugation. These dualisms have structured the French medical and legal debates until recently. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, the evident opposition between freedom and coercion was problematised. The critics tentatively designed a new form of substitution treatment. With methadone and other constraints, this treatment was a search for ‘generous constraint’, that is, for the conditions under which coercion might do a little more than oppress the user. Through a detailed description of several techniques of this experimental treatment, an original variation is added to the anthology of relations between care and coercion. Moreover, this contribution, inspired by ANT, seeks to participate in a criticism of the liberal definition of the human agent.
Violence against doctors: a medical(ised) problem? The case of National Health Service general practitioners
Authors: Elston Mary Ann , Gabe Jonathan , Denney David , Lee Raymond , O'Beirne Maria
Published: March 2003

Violence against doctors provides an illuminating context for studying medicalisation and its limits in the management of deviance. The paper examines the emergence of such violence as a policy issue in England, with particular reference to general practitioners (GPs) in the National Health Service. Recent guidance exhorts doctors to exercise ‘zero tolerance’ with respect to acts of violence. The emphasis is on risk management and protecting victims rather than on resolving the perpetrators’ problems. The paper argues that this policy frame is consistent with recent claims from criminologists that there is a new ‘turn’ in penal policy, away from rehabilitation and addressing the needs of individual offenders. However, responses of individual GPs, obtained through a postal questionnaire sent to c.1000 GPs and in‐depth interviews with a sub‐sample, suggest that doctors are not ‘zero tolerant’ in responding to attacks. But nor are they medical imperialists seeking to include all perpetrators within their professional jurisdiction. Rather, they exercise professional discretion about behaviours which often fall into a ‘grey area’ between ‘illness’ and ‘crime’, and about individuals who are not clearly categorisable as either ‘sick’or‘bad’.
The importance of ‘morality’ in the social construction of suicide in Scottish newspapers
Authors: Coyle Joanne , MacWhannell Doreen
Published: March 2003

Abstract Suicide stories in newspapers have been identified as an important risk factor for individual suicide because they provide real‐life models for vulnerable individuals. The link between suicide ‘stories’ and suicide rates, however, is not clearly understood. One problem is the lack of detailed analysis of how suicide stories are constructed. Yet this is important because it would enable researchers to comprehend more fully how newspaper reports shape and structure ‘reality’. It is argued that the suicide story is a way of mapping out reality and that by de‐constructing we can learn how this shapes and constrains our understanding of suicide and the actions adopted in response to it. The aim of this study, therefore, is to explore the social construction of suicide stories in Scottish newspapers. Two broad sheet and two tabloid newspapers were scanned for suicide stories for the year 1999. One hundred and ninety‐one articles reporting suicide were identified and analysed using grounded theory. This generated a set of conceptual categories, which formed the basis of a framework. The study found that visualising, locating, social impacting and causal searching were key concepts in the construction of a suicide story, and that these were connected through the core explanatory category of ‘morality’. The study also showed how suicide was rendered explicable through the concepts of deviancy, dysfunction and moral weakness.