The sexual division of dieting: women's voices

This article reports the findings of focus group research on Australian women who have engaged in dieting practices to lose weight. There have been few qualitative sociological studies on dieting, despite it being a common practice among western women. From the empirical data in this study three distinct themes emerged: women participate in the perpetuation and reinforcement of the thin ideal; women clearly trade-off health in the pursuit of dieting to lose weight; and the dominant discourse of the thin ideal is not only mediated in various ways, but is also contested by a reverse discourse of size acceptance. A sociology of food and the body enables the discourses in the area of dieting women to be deconstructed, offering an insight into the gendered context of food, which has implications for the sociology of health and illness.     

Toward A Sociology of Nuclear Weapons*

This article serves as an introduction to the issue's special feature on “The Nuclear Threat.” The early sociological literature on nuclear war related issues is reviewed and the dearth of sociological work in this area since the early 1960s is documented. A new call for sociological theory and research on the nuclear threat is issued and possible topics are outlined. The paper concludes with a brief review of the papers that make up the special feature.     

'E-health': the internet and the transformation of patients into consumers and producers of health knowledge

This article analyses the use and production of health information on the Internet. The paper will show that users of health services have also become significant providers of health information and advice. This analysis is based on two studies. The first involved a qualitative study of households that used home computers to find health information on the Internet. The second piece of research involved the examination of home pages that contained accounts of ill health and an e-mailed questionnaire to home page authors. Drawing upon this research the consumption of health information is examined and related to how users make discussions about their health. This is followed by an analysis of the provision of health information on home pages. It is shown that these include web sites that provide simple accounts of an individual illness as well as sites that advocate a particular approach to health or offer services and products. The interweaving of personal experience with advice is considered and linked to debates about the quality of health information on the Internet and the reconfiguration of 'expertise'.     

An evaluation of the use of diaries in a study of medication in later life

This paper is based upon our experience of commissioning diaries to be kept by research subjects. First the paper reviews some previous research based on diaries, then it outlines the aims of our research and the method of data collection. Then the paper goes on to evaluate the design and use of a diary that participants in our research completed. In particular we consider the ways in which the diary may have biased our sample, caused the participants difficulties and generated poor data. There is also a discussion on how it may have affected behaviour and on the ethical issues that are raised by commissioned diaries. In conclusion, observations are made about the strengths and weaknesses of diaries as an investigative tool with a wider applicability. The diary proved particularly revealing and we recommend that other researchers consider diaries as a method of investigating everyday life.     

Where The Trans Men and Enbies At?: Cissexism,Sexual Threat,and the Study of Sex Work

In this article, I examine the existing research on transgender sex workers and explore how cissexism and sexism overlap and shape this work. Overall, researchers assume that all trans sex workers are women, and all male sex workers are assumed to be cisgender. Transmasculine and other gender non‐conforming sex workers are absent from studies of sex work. Researchers in public health and criminology dominate the literature and this research is limited because it focuses only on trans women and because it focuses primarily on disease and trauma, and almost exclusively on HIV. The literature I examined treats transgender women as a public health “problem” to be solved, rather than addressing their experiences and needs as workers and as people in our society. I argue that in order to have useful applied and policy implications aimed at harm reduction, researchers must use a sociological lens to document what structural conditions push and pull people of various genders into sex markets in the first place. Finally, I advocate for the use of queer, intersectional, and transnational frameworks in future lines of inquiries as a way to push the sociological and public health literature on sex work forward in a way that will benefit all sex workers, their advocates, and service providers.     

Sibling caring roles and responsibilities when a child suffers from a chronic illness

Siblings' lives and well-being are potentially affected in profound ways when their brother or sister suffers from a chronic illness in childhood. The shift in the care of chronically ill children from the hospital to the home in recent years has had an impact on family relationships and interactions. Whilst studies on caregiving have focused on the parental care of children who are chronically ill; siblings may nevertheless take on some caring roles and responsibilities. This article intends to make a novel contribution to the sociological literature on siblings, caring, and chronic illness by presenting a review of the literature addressing siblings' caring roles and responsibilities in families of children with a chronic illness. Knowing about the caring roles and responsibilities undertaken by siblings when a brother or sister has a chronic illness, may be beneficial to healthcare professionals and influence their caring practice. In addition, this work may contribute to a better understanding of family relationships and further improve healthcare policies.     

Outcomes in the sociology of mental health and illness: where have we been and where are we going?

Sociologists of mental health and illness have traditionally used outcome measures that they have obtained from other disciplines, especially psychiatry and psychology. These include official statistics, symptom scales, and diagnostic measures. Answers to the central sociological question of how social arrangements affect mental health might require the development of explicitly sociological outcome measures. This introduction provides an overview of several issues that arise in grappling with this question. These include whether symptom scales or diagnoses best capture the mental health consequences of social arrangements; when single or multiple outcomes are necessary to compare the consequences of social arrangements across different groups; if sociologists should explore the positive as well as the negative consequences of social forces; and when sociological attention should be directed toward social-level as well as individual-level outcomes. The papers in this symposium that follow provide more detailed analyses of each of these issues.     

The reflective diary: an experiential tool for enhancing social work students’ research learning

There has been substantial discussion internationally about the need for social work students to integrate research into practice. Little has been written, however, about teaching methods that address the cognitive and emotional challenges students experience in their efforts to develop research competencies. Many students believe that research does not apply to the ‘real’ world of practice and are anxious and fearful when they begin a research course. Using a retrospective review of students’ assignments, this article describes the use of reflective diaries in teaching MSW students from a university in the USA skills for practice-based social work research. Reflective diaries provide a safe forum for students to actively engage with the challenges they experience while taking a research course and take ownership of their learning needs. The diary entries provide instructors with windows into their students’ learning processes that enable them to create scaffolding opportunities that support students in developing confidence in their research skills. This article describes the pedagogical philosophy behind reflective diaries, details of the diaries assignment, and benefits of this learning tool for students and instructors. The authors offer recommendations for incorporating reflective diaries into social work research courses and implications for evidence-based practice.     

Video diaries: audio-visual research methods and the elusive body

The contemporary rise of body studies has led sociologists to take embodiment seriously, however, the issue of methodology in relation to the body remains largely under-explored. This article addresses the concern to capture the elusive body from a methodological perspective and discusses the video diary as a novel device for attending to bodily experience. The article considers how observation is redesigned through the video camera and describes the different ways in which bodily experience can be represented on screen. Using examples from video diaries made by participants in a multi-method study of the body, health and illness in everyday life, it shows how video diaries can contribute to an embodied sociology by making the body visibly, audibly and viscerally present.     

Knowledge,boundaries, and bodies: Social construction between medical sociology and science and technology studies

Medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS) emerged from different positions, but often closely related concerns, within the broad discipline of sociology. Their interface and areas of overlap have mostly been shaped by theoretical positions broadly considered “social constructionist.” Taken together, these perspectives provide empirical and theoretical tools to analyze important questions about how social inequalities, forms of scientific knowledge, and patterns of human health come to be produced and feedback into one another. Examining their intersection enables sociological questions such as: How is medical and public health scientific knowledge produced, stabilized, and taken as fact? How are scientific facts about health and illness used, experienced, and challenged? What is the relationship between health inequalities and public health or medical knowledge? This article seeks to briefly trace the important contributions that social constructionist research has made at the interstices of medical sociology and STS, further clarifying the history, points of intersection, and areas of diversion between them. The current COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled the political struggles that constitute public health scientific knowledge and circulation. The interface between STS and medical sociology can help us to make sense of the interrelationships between politics, power inequalities, and public health scientific knowledge.     

Is this what depression looks like? Visual narratives of depression on social media

Humans are inherent storytellers that in turn shapes our identity. The tendency to talk about health and illness is called ‘illness narratives.’ Most research on illness narratives is generated from diaries, interviews, and surveys. However, text is not the only means of expression. An alternative is to produce images of illness, known as ‘visual illness narratives.’ Depression is a common and serious illness, which can lead to serious health hazards. Despite the increased use of images on social media, little research has been done on visual narratives of depression. The current study examines such illness narratives elicited through images on Tumblr. Fourteen patients with moderately severe depression (Mean age = 27), mostly female (N = 12) were recruited from a counselling centre. Participants were presented with 72 depression-related images from Tumblr in a semi-structured interview. Participants sorted the images into three piles, based on personal relevance, and then talked in detail about each image. Inductive thematic analysis identified six themes providing rich insights into participants’ depressive states, dysfunctional thoughts, suicidal ideation, lifestyle changes, help-seeking, and social struggles. The study offers insights to improve care for depressed individuals using visuals of depression on social media.     

Sociology and the European Court of Human Rights

This article offers a sociological analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Adopting a sociological jurisprudence approach, the article aims to demonstrate the unique and valuable contribution that sociology can make to understanding key aspects of international human rights law. Whilst the article seeks to develop an agenda for critical sociological research on human rights law, it also aims to persuade those charged with the supervision of human rights of the value of sociological analysis. To achieve this, the article focuses on three separate but inter‐related aspects of ECtHR jurisprudence: first, it considers the ECtHR's approach to consensus in its adjudication of human rights complaints; second, it examines the social control implications of the ECtHR's decisions and judgments; and third, it assesses how conceptualizations of social identity are often foundational to the ECtHR's reasoning.     

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.     

Genomics: the clinical encounter and parallels across complementary and personalized medicine

Genomics is progressing from “bench to bedside,” especially in cancer care. Referred to as precision and personalized medicine, this article casts sociological scholarship on genomic medicine into three interconnected realms: laboratory, family, and clinic. Thought to be solely and objectively discovered in the laboratory, sociological research illustrates the messiness of genetic research. The self in (late) modern times is popularly conceptualized as unique and discrete; precision medicine highlights boundedness and the molecular material shared across families. Within the clinic, sociological research has focused on the geneticization debate over the extent to which genetic ways of understanding disease have subsumed other approaches to conceptualizing and treating illness and the impact of genomics on medicine's dominance. How else is genomic medicine affecting the clinical encounter? We ask if personalized medicine unexpectedly reflects practices found in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), raising questions about what this means for modern medicine and the patient‐consumer.     

Beyond the Sociology of Diagnosis

The sociology of diagnosis offers a vantage point from which to study health and illness, linking a number of other threads of sociological thought. While there has been a growing interest in diagnosis since Mildred Blaxter's suggestion for a sociological exploration in 1978 – a call echoed by Brown in 1990 – it is timely to reflect upon the way in which sociologists engage with diagnosis. Within this review essay, I first consider what it is to “be a sociology” in general terms. I then explore the implications of this for an effective sociology of diagnosis, discussing the priorities it has recently developed as well as the directions its scholars might consider. Finally, I suggest ways in which sociologists of diagnosis could broaden their approach in order to advance their understanding of health, illness, and medicine.     

Providing nursing leadership in a community residential mental health setting

The worldwide burden of mental illness is increasing. Strong leadership is increasingly emerging as a core component of good mental health nursing. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the ways in which nurses can provide strong and consistent leadership in a values-based practice environment that embodies respect for individuals' dignity and self-determination within a community residential mental health service, which provides a structural foundation for effective action. This is accomplished through the presentation of two vignettes, which highlight how the seemingly impossible becomes possible when an economic paradigm such as agency theory is exchanged for a sociological and psychological paradigm found in leadership as stewardship at the point of service. It is through stronger nursing leadership in mental health that stigma and discrimination can be reduced and better access to treatments and services can be gained by those with mental illness. Nurse leadership in mental health services is not new, but it is still relatively uncommon to see residential services for "high needs" individuals being led by nurses. How nurses meet the challenges faced by mental health services are often at the heart of effective leadership skills and strategies.     

Organising Generations – What Can Sociology Offer to the Understanding of Generations at Work?

Generations at work is a topic of much concern for research and practice, yet sociological scholarship on generations in a work context is scarce. This article brings together sociological research on generations with popular and psychological research on generations at work and explores the potential of a sociology of generations at work through a discussion of the latest generation entering the workplace. The article proceeds to explore which contribution a sociology of generations at work might make and suggests some potential avenues for further research.     

Childhood mental health and adult family relationships: How ADHD shapes experiences with intimate unions and parenthood

Increasingly recognized as a chronic condition that can endure across the life course, childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with less stable family formation and more strain around intimate unions (dating, cohabitation and marriage) and parenthood. This article reviews and evaluates multidisciplinary research on childhood ADHD, intimate unions and parenthood, with the purpose of motivating future sociological research in this area. The paper is organized into three general sections. First, I provide an overview of information on ADHD including its diagnosis and treatment, cross-disciplinary etiologies, and sociodemographic correlates. Next, I blend sociological perspectives on labeling and stigma, social stress, and the life course to consider the role of ADHD-related stigma in shaping associations of childhood ADHD with family formation processes (intimate unions and parenthood) and family functioning (relationship quality and communication) in adulthood. Finally, I discuss opportunities for future sociological research on childhood ADHD and adult family relationships that have the potential to contribute both to empirical research on childhood ADHD and adult family relationships, as well as to sociological research at the intersection of family and health.     

Sociological Research on Feminism and the Women’s Movement: Ideology,Identity, and Practice

This article provides an overview of sociological research on three aspects of feminism: feminism as an ideology; feminism as an identity; and feminism as a practice. I summarize the main contributions of sociological research in each of these areas, and highlight the overarching contributions for understanding contemporary feminism. Three contributions are key. First, sociological research highlights the existence multiple varieties of feminism –“feminisms” as opposed to a singular “feminism.” Second, this research reveals that feminist ideologies, identities, and movements are each dynamic – they have changed historically, and continue to change in response to shifting socio‐political, economic, and technological landscapes. Third, sociological research demonstrates that feminism is alive and well, and in many senses thriving, in the contemporary United States. Though some aspects of feminism are more widespread than others, sociological research challenges the notion that feminism, on the whole, has declined. As an ideology, an identity, and a practice, feminism remains strong in the contemporary United States.