Brazil’s non-indifference: a case for a feminist diplomatic agenda or geopolitics as usual?

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Brazil took advantage of its economically and politically privileged position to challenge global normative structures. In 2004, the concept of “non-indifference” was integrated into the Brazilian vocabulary of foreign policy, justifying and legitimating the country’s acceptance of the invitation to command the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). On the one hand, non-indifference can be read as a discursive maneuver that enabled Brazil to accommodate its non-interventionist agenda to an old geopolitical game, given the pressure imposed upon “global players” to respond effectively and assertively to threats to international peace and security. On the other hand, the “Brazilian way” could also be seen as an alternative to a highly masculinized geopolitical approach to international security. This paper explores possible limitations, tensions and/or opportunities that emerge from the encounter between a feminist diplomatic agenda and a masculinizing ordering of the international space. It does so by contrasting Brazil’s ambition for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the club of powerful states, with Brazil’s diplomatic and military performance during MINUSTAH, widely evaluated as a success due to characteristics such as solidarity, generosity, flexibility and the “warm conviviality” of Brazilian culture.     

‘Making narrative portraits: a methodological approach to analysing qualitative data’

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the method of ‘narrative portraiture’, which, located within the wider field of narrative studies, offers an analytical tool to narrative data. Two research projects, one on disability and one on identity, are used to illustrate how the method can be applied. While the paper will focus on the methodological benefits and limitations of the approach, throughout the article we also highlight the ethical concern of representation. We suggest that through ‘narrative portraiture’ research findings can be contextualised in broader social narratives without losing sight of the unique personal qualities of the research encounter. Thus, we argue for the importance of bringing the participant and their everyday life experience into focus, highlighting that a portrayal of a sole story can be, not only a medium to understand a research phenomenon, but also a valuable research output in itself.     

Managing Risk as a Duality of Harm and Benefit: A Study of Organizational Risk Objects in the Global Insurance Industry

This study examines how organizations construct and manage risk objects as a duality of harm–benefit within their normal operations. It moves beyond the existing focus on accidents, disasters and crisis. We study the risk‐transfer processes of 35 insurers where they navigate the tension of retaining risk in their insurance portfolio to increase the benefit of making profit and transferring risk to reinsurance to reduce the harm of paying claims. We show that organizations’ constructions of risk are underpinned by everyday risk management practices of centralizing, calculating and diversifying. Through variation in these practices, not all organizations seek balance and we in turn uncover the sensemaking processes of abstracting and localizing that enable organizations to prioritize harm or benefit. This contributes to the risk literature by illuminating the co‐constitutive relationship between risk sensemaking processes and everyday risk management practices. Following the complex linkages involved in the construction of risk objects as sources of harm–benefit, our analysis also contributes to the literature on dualities. It shows that while immediate trade‐offs between harm–benefit occur, prioritizing one element of the duality is ultimately a means for attaining the other. Thus, while initial imbalance is evident, prioritization can be an enabling approach to navigating duality.     

Legitimizing leisure experiences as emotional work: A post‐humanist approach to gendered equine encounters

Due to changes in lifestyle and work patterns, education and values associated with wellbeing, non‐human animals are now incorporated into a range of human experiences and environments. This research specifically focuses on human–equine relations, examining blurred boundaries between therapeutic and recreational interspecies encounters. It is acknowledged that human–equine relations are often gendered and this research focuses mainly on women's narratives. Viewed through the post‐humanist lens, horses now form kinship and companionship roles, particularly for women, where relations have become mutually emotionally dependent as a result of interspecies communication and embodied encounters. Research utilizes feminist post‐humanist and cultural politics of emotion frameworks associate with the co‐agency on the co‐agency of animals. Embedded in the concept of equiscapes, or post‐humanist leisure spaces, research methods employ qualitative approaches, including in‐depth interviews, participant diaries and multispecies ethnography. Findings reveal how women make considerable investments in equine activities, which develops mutual welfare and wellbeing. Yet, despite these benefits, emotional and other expenditures are justified in work discourses to legitimize them as valuable to themselves, their families and their communities.     

Health Care innovation and children in poverty: lived experiences of caregivers of children with disabilities in a medicaid-serving ACO

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study of caregivers of children with disabilities enrolled in a Medicaid-serving accountable care organization (ACO). The state of Ohio mandated ACO enrollment for Medicaid-eligible children with disabilities in 34 of 88 counties effective July 2013. Research participants were queried in focus groups and individual interviews about their children’s care experiences and care coordination after enrollment. Most told researchers that they themselves are their children’s care coordinators, and many indicated that resource scarcity is a more pressing problem than fragmented care. Data analysis identified a theme of scarcity and four categories of insufficiency that made caregiver efforts on behalf of their children more difficult: a lack of health services under managed care, resource constraints on other agencies and programs for which families were eligible, a lack of financial support, and a lack of family support. A conceptual framework places ACO care coordination among more upstream factors and identifies ways in which ACOs serving Medicaid populations may wish to address the social determinants of the well-being of children with disabilities. Implications for future research are discussed.