The Space‐Control Theory of Paramedic Scene‐Management

Paramedics provide emergency service in physically hazardous and socially complex situations. These work settings present unique challenges in terms of managing resources and relationships in a multicrisis context, in order to enable the delivery of emergency patient care. Using data obtained from interviewing paramedics, this study demonstrates the usefulness of symbolic interaction theory for context analysis, by analyzing an important aspect of paramedic practice: scene management. Through grounded theory methodology, this study also presents the first interactionism‐based theory of how paramedics manage emergency scenes. This theory emphasizes the critical role of social processes in establishing social control in work spaces.     

Driving to Work: The Front Seat Work of Paramedics to and from the Scene

The work paramedics do in the front of the ambulance on their way to and from the scene is central to the safety and well‐being of both paramedics and patients. However, most research on paramedics and emergency medical services assumes rather than empirically explores the actual happenings of what paramedics do in the front of their ambulance. In this article, I move beyond this taken‐for‐granted understanding of front‐seat work by taking readers in the front of the ambulance and exploring the hidden work paramedics do on their way to and from the scene. I draw on data from an institutional ethnography into the socially organized work and work settings of paramedics, which included over 200 hours of observations and over 100 interviews with paramedics. This article adds to research on the sociology of work and health and illness by focusing explicitly on how paramedics give meaning to their work setting, the social conditions and relations central to their work practices, and how their work knowledge is actually put into practice. In doing so, I shed light on an ever‐important occupational group in health care that has garnered little sociological attention to date.     

The confidential patient: the social construction of therapeutic relationships in general medical practice

The interpersonal relationship between doctor and patient is fundamental to general medical practice. In this paper we explore the ways in which general practitioners make sense of the changing political economy of this relationship, as it is restructured by ideas about the patient as consumer, and as it increasingly constitutes the consultation as a point of interaction that may be intrinsically therapeutic. In particular, we explore the ways in which the consultation is the site of negotiated power relations between doctor and patient, and is the site of the doctor's negotiation of powerful discourses of professional and institutional identity.     

The Role of Social Networks in the Recruitment of Youth in an Islamist Organization in Pakistan

Drawing on data from 40 qualitative interviews, this article examines how young people are connected with one influential Islamist student organization in Pakistan. It provides deeper insight into the micro-level mechanisms and processes by which new members are approached and drawn closer to the particular organization. Findings reveal that young people who joined this organization did not necessarily do so because of their ideological affinity, political or social grievances or because of macro-level events occurring in the national or global arena, such as the U.S.-led war on terror. Rather, they predominantly ended up in the organization because of their friends and acquaintances who were activists in the organization.     

Asian Women,Job Training and the Social Organization of Immigrant Labor Markets

This paper examines the entry of Asian immigrant women into a gendered labor market via government-funded job training programs. The focus is on the intake processing of clients into an employment training program operated by a community based organization. The study reveals that women's family responsibilities and the cultural capital they bring function to screen them into or out of training programs and ultimately shape their location in the workforce. The study thus draws attention to how race, class, and gender enter into the organization of Asian immigrant women into the labor market. This investigation is based in institutional ethnography (Smith 1987), a research strategy which displays how activities in a particular setting are coordinated with more extended forms of social organization. The study shows that the overriding concern with successful placement in a job as mandated by government regulations is a critical factor in selecting the women for these programs.     

Estrogen treatment affects brain functioning after menopause

Sex hormones have powerful neuromodulatory effects on functional brain organization and cognitive functioning. This paper reviews findings from studies investigating the influence of sex hormones in postmenopausal women with and without hormone therapy (HT). Functional brain organization was investigated using different behavioural tasks in postmenopausal women using either estrogen therapy or combined estrogen plus gestagen therapy and age- and IQ-matched postmenopausal women not taking HT. The results revealed HT-related modulations in specific aspects of functional brain organization including functional cerebral asymmetries and interhemispheric interaction. In contrast to younger women during the menstrual cycle, however, it seems that HT, and especially estrogen therapy, after menopause affects intrahemispheric processing rather than interhemispheric interaction. This might be explained by a faster and more pronounced age-related decline in intrahemispheric relative to interhemispheric functioning, which might be associated with higher sensitivity to HT. Taken together, the findings suggest that the female brain retains its plasticity even after reproductive age and remains susceptible to the effects of sex hormones throughout the lifetime, which might help to discover new clinical approaches in the hormonal treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders.     

Working For Tips: an Examination of Trust and Reciprocity in A Secondary Relationship of the Restaurant Organization*

This study reports on the operation of trust and reciprocity in a secondary relationship of the restaurant organization. Working for tips rather than contract wages, the waitress is required to trust the customer and depend on the rule of reciprocity for her wages. Each restaurant customer is extended credit or trust during the service interaction. The restaurant worker develops a disposition or attitude towards this act of credit. The question for investigation is which conditions, structural or interactional, exert the greatest influence on the credit attitude expressed by the waitress? The table service staff of eight restaurants serve as the sample. When both models are tested, only the structural conditions exert a significant influence on the credit attitude. Findings suggest that acts of trust and reciprocity are influenced more by the climate or orientation of the employing organization than by conditions of work interaction.     

The Interaction of Grievances and Structures in Social Movement Analysis: The Case of JUST*

Drawing upon insights from the social movement literature as well as leadership experience in a successful social movement organization, this paper suggests aspects of a framework for integrating traditional and contemporary approaches. The case history of JUST (Johnstowners United to Stop anoiuci Tragedy) is used to illustrate the interaction of grievances and structures in the career of a social movement organization. In addition to helping fill a lacuna in the literature on the internal dynamics of such organizations, this analysis also demonstrates the importance of the nature of the grievance as well as the target group's structural entrenchment. The paper focuses upon a relatively anomalous case for U.S. social movement organizations: an SMO which was successful despite displacement goals. The final section of the paper includes a summary diagram of the factors involved in JUSTs successful protest effort as well as broader generalizations suggesting the conditions under which grievances or infrastructures are more salient in explaining social movement phenomena.     

UK Paramedics Confidence in Identifying Child Sexual Abuse: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

United Kingdom (UK) paramedics are in a prime position to identify children and young people who are victims or at risk of sexual abuse. Paramedics have access, by phone, or in person, to unprepared homes and communities which other health professionals such as social workers may not. Little research exists however, investigating UK paramedic confidence in identifying child sexual abuse. This mixed-method explanatory sequential investigation used the self-reported confidence levels of 276 UK paramedics to inform the design of seven semi-structured focus groups with 25 UK paramedics from a large ambulance service with operating models similar to all UK services. Multiple factors contribute to a lack of confidence in identifying child sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, and female genital mutilation, including a perceived lack of exposure to sexual abuse, the perceived hidden nature of sexual abuse, and the lack of physical symptoms and examination. An overarching lack of knowledge is the most significant contributor to a lack of confidence which in turn perpetuates misinformation surrounding prevalence, location, and the signs and symptoms of sexual abuse. These findings suggest a lack of sufficient training and a need for further research evaluating the content of current training and its method of delivery.     

Routine deaths: fatal accidents in the oil industry

This paper is a study in the relatively neglected field of the Sociology of Accidents and is concerned with fatalities in the UK Offshore Oil Industry. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the social and organizational causes of these accidents. Common sense and expert opinion both present industrial accidents as products of extra organizational abnormality but evidence from this research locates the causes of accidents in work organization and dependence on bureaucratic rationality. In particular it is shown that the hazardous situations in which the accidents occurred were themselves largely the products of two aspects of the formal organization of work, the 'speed-up’and the practice of ‘sub-contracting’. It is demonstrated that the common sense equation of the‘normal’and the‘routine’inhibited recognition of the organization causes of these accidents. Finally it is argued that, since there is little support for the view that the accident were produced by unique working conditions in the offshore industry, it is therefore likely that the causes of accidents in this industry will be found to exist in other industries.     

The Politics of Address in Early-Modern England

Abstract Whilst historians’ perceptions of the social organization of early-modern England have recently been dichotomized – perceived from either national or local levels – both interpretations rely on sources that are inherently very rhetorical in their representation of self and others. Is there another way of approaching local social relations? Perhaps there is much to be appreciated by a return to questions of social interaction, in particular at that most basic level of how people addressed each other, demonstrating social distance and closeness, exclusion and inclusion.     

Private time and public time: the temporal structure of social accessibility and professional commitments

This paper highlights the temporal aspects of social accessibility, demonstrating that time is a major dimension of social organization along which both privacy and professional commitments are defined in modern society. An analysis of the temporal structure of professional commitments within the domain of health care, leads to the claim that the temporally rigid way in which most professional commitments are defined today is one of the key characteristics of modern social organization. A general conceptual scheme, constructed around the temporal structure of social accessibility, is evaluated in terms of its use in helping us identify and differentiate various occupational roles as well as various status rankings within stratification systems. The symbolic significance of the temporal organization of social accessibility is stressed-both in general, and for professional commitments in particular.     

The Rhetoric of Value Transfer in Organizations*

This paper examines the rhetoric found in the referral pamphlets distributed by military academies and homes for the mentally retarded. The material is analyzed from a perspective which views value exchange between client and organization as an initial means of institutionalizing the relations between the person and the service organization. Discussion centers around the heuristic value of economic models in sociological analysis, with particular reference to that non-institutionalized sphere of the division of labor that encompasses service organizations which lack viable client referral mechanisms.     

Negotiations,Work Objects,and the Unborn Patient: The Interactional Scaffolding of Fetal Surgery

This article examines the interactional scaffolding of fetal surgery, an emergent medical specialty focused on the unborn patient. Drawing on work in symbolic interaction, especially that of Mead and Strauss, the article focuses on the social organization of work in a Fetal Treatment Unit at an urban teaching hospital. The major types of interactions among participants are cooperation and conflict, illustrating the many differences among actors in this social world and their need to work together to successfully build their specialty. Differences discussed in this article center on the work object in fetal surgery (who is considered the patient?), criteria for patient selection, and definitions of disease and treatment. Actors must continually negotiate these and other differences as they create the social order of fetal surgery in a politicized context, both locally at Capital Hospital and for the specialty more generally.     

The role of age in the relationship between work social characteristics and job attitudes

Despite the amount of research on the link between work social characteristics and job attitudes, there is a lack of work on moderators of this relationship. In the present study, we examine the role of age as a moderating effect of this relationship using life-span development theory. The aim of this paper is to study the moderator effect of age in the relationship between two work social characteristics (interaction outside the organization and interdependence) and job attitudes (i.e., general job satisfaction and work engagement). Participants were 258 workers from private organizations. Data were collected at two time points (2 to 4 weeks between T₁ and T₂). Results showed that the relationship between interdependence and work engagement was stronger for older workers than for younger workers. In addition, the relationship between interaction outside the organization and general job satisfaction was stronger for younger than for older workers. Because increased engagement and satisfaction in an age-diverse workforce is important, organizations may benefit by challenging older workers with interdependent tasks, and younger workers with interaction with stakeholders outside the organization.     

Listening to the Voices of Lesbians Diagnosed with Cancer

Abstract

This paper focuses on the operations of heterosexism and strategies to counter it in a particular service context: the context of psychosocial support services for women with cancer. The paper draws on findings from a participatory, qualitative study set in Ontario, Canada in which 26 lesbians were interviewed about their experiences of cancer diagnosis, treatment, health care and social support, and their feelings and perceptions about shifts in identity, body, sexuality and relationships. This paper focuses on findings related to the changes research participants perceived as necessary in the provision and organization of cancer support services, in order to increase access and ensure equity for lesbians with cancer and their families.     

Stuck in the Middle: Maintaining the Organizational Legitimacy of the Regional Environmental Center

Maintenance of legitimacy is central to the survival of any organization and is of particular importance to non-governmental organizations (NGO) reliant on external sources of income. Interaction with the external environment plays an important role in determining organizational legitimacy, shaping actions and determining opportunities. The ability of an organization to effectively respond to and influence the external environment can potentially strengthen its legitimacy. This paper considers the issue of organizational legitimacy by using resource dependence and institutional theories to analyze the development of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC). The findings indicate that it is possible for an organization to maintain legitimacy through adaptation, responding to the rise and fall of external opportunities and challenges. As predicted by institutional theory, it also argues that external environmental factors place increasing pressure for conformity over time, limiting scope to manoeuvre over the longer-term.     

Terms for Intergenerational Relations Among the Tumbuka of Northern Malawi

ABSTRACT

Culturally enshrined ideas about generational relations affect language, the use of language, and linguistic conventions for expressing these ideas. Generation terms (or age-set terms) distinguish people in the social group according to their age and sex. The age set is a formally organized group of youths, or men or women which has collectively passed through a series of stages each of which has distinctive status, ceremonial, military or other activities. Membership of the group frequently involves ritual in initiation, accompanied by special teaching of the community's law and customs, instructions in sexual matters, and, in some societies, physical initiation that is the mark of attainment of maturity. But how is the system of intergenerational relationship manifested in a particular social group? How do the members of each generation use language differently? How does language treat the generations differently? How do such differences affect our perceptions, attitudes and behavior in everyday life? How do language and behavior reflect unity of the generation groups and their relationship to each other? In this paper we are going to examine the social, cultural, and linguistic characteristics that focus on features common to members of a particular generation and account for its relationship to other generations. We will do this by looking at the Tumbuka of northern Malawi, and examining their social organization and the system of terms and social behavior that is employed in addressing and referring to members of a particular generation. The learning of generation-type language by children and cross-cultural aspects of these questions will be considered.     

Practising family history: ‘identity’ as a category of social practice

Research on family history argues it performs the task of anchoring a sense of ‘self’ through tracing ancestral connection and cultural belonging, seeing it as a form of storied ‘identity‐work’. This paper draws on a small‐scale qualitative study to think further on the identity‐work of family history. Using practice theory, and a disaggregated notion of ‘identity’, it explores how the storying of family histories relates to genealogy as a leisure hobby, a form of historical research, and an information‐processing activity; and examines the social organization of that narrativity, where various practical engagements render certain kinds of genealogical information more, or less, ‘storyable’. Key features of ‘identity‐work’ in family history, such as the construction of genealogy as a personal journey of discovery and identification with particular ancestors, emerge as a consequence of the procedures of family history, organized as a set of practical tasks. The paper explores ‘identity‐work’ as a consequence of people's engagement in specific social practices which provide an internal logic to their actions, with various components of ‘identity’ emerging as categories of practice shaped within, and for, use. Focusing on ‘identity’ as something produced when we are engaged in doing other things, the paper examines how the practical organization of ‘doing other things’ helps produce ‘identity’ in particular ways.