Framing post-conflict societies: an analysis of the international pathologisation of Cambodia and the post-Yugoslav states

The article examines the pathologisation of post-conflict societies through a comparison of the framing of the Cambodian and post-Yugoslav states. The notion of failed states fixes culpability for war on societies in question, rendering the domestic populations dysfunational while casting international rescue interventions as functional. The article suggests that the discourse of pathologisation can be understood not as a means of explaining state crisis so much as legitimising an indefinite international presence and deferring self-government

<i>Rehabilitation doxa</i> and practitioner judgment. An analysis of symbolic violence on health care provision in the Scottish prison system

This paper presents an analysis of the symbolic conditions which govern health care provision in the Scottish prison system. The paper considers the wider context of Scottish prisons, where health care provision follows a similar structure both in juvenile and adult prisons. Our intention is to provoke a debate about the doxa (Bourdieu, 1977), which underlies decision making in respect of health care in prison, in a political environment where pragmatism, allied to the ‘pathologisation’ of social policies, health and criminal justice has been a hegemonic force.<br/

"It's complicated" : the lived experience of female sexual desire : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Health Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand

‘What is sexual desire and how do women experience it?’ is the central question of this hermeneutic phenomenological study. The goal was to challenge the pathologisation of women’s sexual desire by highlighting its complexity, situatedness and temporality. In-depth interviews and autobiographical art data elicited in partnership with seven participants were interpreted and analysed using a life course perspective to highlight how both positive and negative experiences, as well as the acceptance or resistance of cultural scripts and double standards, contribute over time to a woman’s sense of her own access to sexual desire, agency around sexual decision-making, and entitlement to sexual pleasure. In line with the study’s meta-theoretical principles, the researcher completed a parallel reflexive writing and art practice to deepen her engagement with participant experience. In analysing all data, it became evident that women’s sexual desire, develops through a complex multistage process over the lifetime. Participants all reflected MacNeil and Byers’ (2005) finding that the more comfortable and agentic a woman feels in expressing her sexuality and communicating her desires, the greater her feelings for intimacy and the higher likelihood that she will derive satisfaction in sex

Jackson Mark, The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 311, £35, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-19-958862-6.

Copyright © The Author(s) 2013PMCID: PMC386596

Urban 'disorders', 'problem places' and criminal justice in Scotland

[About the book] The existence of the separate criminal jurisdiction in Scotland is ignored by most criminological texts purporting to consider crime and criminal justice in 'Britain' or the 'UK'. This book offers a critically-informed analysis and understanding of crime and criminal justice in contemporary Scotland. It considers key areas of criminal justice policy making in Scotland; in particular the extent to which criminal justice in Scotland is increasingly divergent from other UK jurisdictions as well as pressures that may lead to convergences in particular areas, for instance, in relation to trends in youth justice and penal policy. The book considers the extent to which Scottish crime and criminal justice is being affected both by devolution as well as the wider pressures resulting from globalization, Europeanisation and new patterns of migration. While the book has a Scottish focus, it also offers new ways of thinking about criminal justice – relating these issues to wider social divisions and inequalities in contemporary Scottish and UK society. It extends the ‘gaze’ and analysis of criminology by exploring issues such as environmental crime, urban disorder and the new urbanism as well as crimes of the rich and powerful and corporate crime, giving it a relevance and resonance far beyond Scotland. Criminal Justice in Scotland will be an essential text for students in Scotland taking courses in criminology, sociology, social policy, social sciences, law and police sciences, as well as criminal justice practitioners and policy makers in Scotland. It will also be an essential source for students of comparative criminology elsewhere and academics wishing to take Scotland into account in thinking about criminal justice in the UK

The Big Society and the Conjunction of Crises: Justifying Welfare Reform and Undermining Social Housing

The idea of the “Big Society” can be seen as culmination of a long-standing debate about the regulation of welfare. Situating the concept within governance theory, the article considers how the UK coalition government has justified a radical restructuring of welfare provision, and considers its implications for housing provision. Although drawing on earlier modernization processes, the article contends that the genesis for welfare reform was based on an analysis that the government was forced to respond to a unique conjunction of crises: in morality, the state, ideology and economics. The government has therefore embarked upon a programme, which has served to undermine the legitimacy of the social housing sector (most notably in England), with detrimental consequences for residents and raising significant dilemmas for those working in the housing sector

Panoptic Power and the Pathologisation of Vision: Critical Reflections on the Foucauldian Thesis.

This article attempts to evaluate theoretically the applicability of Foucault’s Panopticon to the practices of public surveillance utilising CCTV technology. The first part maps out three “strands” in the reception of panopticism in surveillance studies, suggesting that it tends to fall into one of three broad kinds: its wholesale appropriation and application; its wholesale rejection as inadequate with respect to a supposedly “post-disciplinary” society; and its qualified acceptance subject to some empirically-dependent limitations. I then attempt in a preliminary way to supplement these three positions. In particular, I question the logical adequacy of equating visual surveillance with effective subjectification and self-discipline by drawing upon a range of philosophical and sociological perspectives. Philosophically, it is suggested that the Foucauldian thesis may well “pathologise” the relationship between subjectivity and visibility, and thereby overlook other dimensions of our experience of vision. Sociologically, it is suggested that the precise relation between surveillance and self-discipline requires us to attend, in ethnomethodological fashion, to the situated sense-making activities of subjects as the go about everyday practical activities in public settings