The role of networks of practice and webs of influencers on farmers' engagement with and learning about agricultural innovations

Drawing on the UK research project, ‘Farmers’ understandings of GM crops within local communities’, this paper considers the application of the concepts of communities of practice and networks of practice in the agricultural context. A brief review of theories about communities of practice and networks of practice is given and some of our findings are discussed in the context of those theories.Farmers were found to be a particular type of network of practice, characterised by a weak organisational framework but with a relatively stable network of other communities of practice (or networks of practice) they interact with, which we have called a ‘web of influencers on practice’. Together, farmers’ network of practice and their web of influencers on practice represent the whole environment in which learning may occur, and so provide insights into their social learning system. Most farmers have to work at the boundary of their network of practice and their web of influencers, which creates a significant load on their knowledge management. This is in contrast to other networks of practice where only some members take on this boundary brokering role. The paper concludes that these theories (on networks and communities of practice) provide a useful lens through which to view farmers and their practice, highlighting important points for policy. However, in such contexts these theories need to be extended to include the role of a broader ‘web of influencers on practice’.     

Classroom Goal Structures and HIV and Pregnancy Prevention Education in Rural High School Health Classrooms

Over 5,000 adolescents enrolled in required rural high school health courses reported their perceptions of mastery and extrinsic goal structures in their health classrooms. Data were collected from all students at three time points (prior to HIV and pregnancy instruction, 3 months after instruction, and 1 year after instruction). Results indicated that classroom goal structures were related to both proximal and distal knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and efficacy beliefs. Results in particular indicate that the perception of a mastery goal structure in health education classrooms fosters knowledge, improved attitudes, enhanced efficacy beliefs, and lower intentions to have sexual intercourse.     

‘How can we go on caring when nobody here cares about us?’ Australian public maternity units as contested care sites

BackgroundProvision of personalised, continuous care focused on ‘well women’ is now central to midwifery identity and work ideals, but it remains difficult in hospital contexts shaped by increased demand and by neoliberal policies. Previous accounts of occupational and work-family conflicts in midwifery and nursing have pointed to the ‘moral distress’ associated with managing conflicting expectations in health workplaces.QuestionThis paper examines these issues in the Australian context and considers further the ethical implications of midwives not feeling ‘cared for’ themselves in health care organisations.MethodsQualitative research in several Victorian maternity units included use of interviews and observational methods to explore staff experiences of organisational and professional change. Data were coded and analysed using NVivo.FindingsMidwives reported frequent contestation as they sought to practice their ideal of themselves as caregivers in what they reported as often ‘uncaring’ workplaces. To interpret this data, we argue for seeing midwifery caring as embodied social practice taking place within ‘organisation carescapes’.ConclusionTheoretical analysis of the moral and ethical dimensions of the contemporary organisational structure of maternity care suggests that a practice-based and dialogical ethic should form the core principle of care both for women in childbirth and for their carers.     

Four-wheel drivescapes: Embodied understandings of the Kimberley

In this paper, we explore understandings of the Kimberley as wilderness through the embodied knowledge of sites encountered on the travels of four-wheel drivers. We critically review attempts to conceptualise the social role of automobiles in touring practices then turn to non-representational theory to develop our own conceptual framework of four-wheel drivescapes. Our use of this term acknowledges that understandings of the world are fashioned by our bodily situatedness in, and towards the world. Through the vantage point provided by four-wheel drive technologies, tourists are engaged in generating embodied understandings of tourism destinations through an ongoing process of defining, experiencing, interpreting and responding to human and non-human worlds. We trace the means by which the emobodied knowledge of tourists who travel through the Kimberley by four-wheel drive becomes integral to their understanding of this place as wilderness. Our results suggest how two separate, yet intersecting four-wheel drivescapes of luxury and hardship reconfigure normative ideas of the outback as wilderness.     

Obesity and gynaecological cancer

Obesity is now considered to be a global epidemic. The problem of obesity has significant implications for the diagnosis and treatment of gynaecological cancer. The cancer most frequently associated with obesity is that of the endometrium. The risk of endometrial cancer is 2-3 times higher in overweight and obese women. Obesity also adversely affects survival in most studies. With regard to ovarian cancer the evidence is inconsistent. Obesity in young adulthood may be more important than that in later life. With regard to survival obesity has an adverse effect but not in early stage disease. Few data are available regarding cervical cancer and obesity. There is evidence that obesity is associated with adenocarcinoma rather than squamous carcinoma. Data on vulval cancer and obesity are scant.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Relationship Counselling For Children, Young People and Families Geldard, K. Geldard, D. MENDS Counsellor Manual: A Structured Approach to Assisting Men in Relationship Crisis: Pershouse, Owen C.     

Institutional Fads and the Medicalization of Drug Addiction

The purpose of this article is to historically review biologically based explanations of drug addiction to demonstrate the increased utility of the institutional fads approach in understanding modern medicalization. Our examination reveals that the medicalization of drug addiction has been long in the making, traveling through numerous fads that have attributed drug addiction to various biological matter, including body type or constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and neuroscience or brain imaging. These explanations follow a common trajectory (emerging, surging, and purging) in institutional fad research. Moreover, our analysis indicates that while scientific and technological developments have shaped these approaches’ influence and pathways, so too have political actors and institutional agendas. We begin by discussing how an institutional fads approach enables an improved understanding of the medicalization of drug addiction – a form of deviance – followed by a critique of four main biological explanations: body constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and brain chemistry/imaging. Our review pinpoints the specific narratives advanced and the academic and political interests at work. In doing so, it exposes the limitations of medicalizing one of the nation’s oldest social problems.     

Choice and constraint in budget-making

A theory of the budgetary process within public resource allocation has to recognize that decision rules may vary over time and program. Our findings based on a new econometric approach indicate that various different decision mechanisms operate in different categories of public resource allocation. Variation over time is particularly difficult to accommodate within the incrementalist approach as incremental decision rules imply structural stability over time. We find the opposite to be true of the programs analysed.A model of the public expenditure process has to take choice into account to a larger extent. The attempt to make budget-making a function of constraints violates the occurrence of shiftpoints that is typical of the data. The existence of a base and the resort to mechanical rules for the derivation of the yearly increments implies a deterministic interpretation of budgetary behavior. Budgets are made in choice processes where the principal actors employ various decision rules meaning that budget-making is more voluntaristic than deterministic. The choice rules employed for the derivation of requests and appropriations are not mechanistic decision rules.