Arctic passages: liminality, Iñupiat Eskimo mothers and NW Alaska communities in transition

Background. While the primary goal of the NW Alaska Native maternal transport is safe deliveries for mothers from remote villages, little has been done to question the impact of transport on the mothers and communities involved. This study explores how presence of Iñupiat values influences the desire of indigenous women of differing eras and NW Alaska villages to participate in biomedical birth, largely made available by a tribal health-sponsored transport system. Objective. This paper portrays how important it is (and why) for Alaska Native families and women of different generations from various areas of Iñupiat villages of NW Alaska to get to the hospital to give birth. This research asks: How does a community’s presence of Iñupiat values influence women of different eras and locations to participate in a more biomedical mode of birth? Design. Theoretical frameworks of medical anthropology and maternal identity work are used to track the differences in regard to the maternal transport operation for Iñupiat mothers of the area. Presence of Iñupiat values in each of the communities is compared by birth era and location for each village. Content analysis is conducted to determine common themes in an inductive, recursive fashion. Results. A connection is shown between a community’s manifestation of Iñupiat cultural expression and mothers’ acceptance of maternal transport in this study. For this group of Iñupiat Eskimo mothers, there is interplay between community expression of Iñupiat values and desire and lengths gone to by women of different eras and locations. Conclusions. The more openly manifested the Iñupiat values of the community, the more likely alternative birthing practices sought, lessening the reliance on the existing transport policy. Conversely, the more openly western values are manifested in the village of origin, the less likely alternative measures are sought. For this study group, mothers from study villages with openly manifested western values are more likely to easily acquiesce to policy, and “make the best” of their prenatal travel

Cosmetic surgery: regulatory challenges in a global beauty market

The market for cosmetic surgery tourism is growing with an increase in people travelling abroad for cosmetic surgery. While the reasons for seeking cosmetic surgery abroad may vary the most common reason is financial, but does cheaper surgery abroad carry greater risks? We explore the risks of poorly regulated cosmetic surgery to society generally before discussing how harm might be magnified in the context of cosmetic tourism, where the demand for cheaper surgery drives the market and makes surgery accessible for increasing numbers of people. This contributes to the normalisation of surgical enhancement, creating unhealthy cultural pressure to undergo invasive and risky procedures in the name of beauty. In addressing the harms of poorly regulated surgery, a number of organisations purport to provide a register of safe and ethical plastic surgeons, yet this arguably achieves little and in the absence of improved regulation the risks are likely to grow as the global market expands to meet demand. While the evidence suggests that global regulation is needed, the paper concludes that since a global regulatory response is unlikely, more robust domestic regulation may be the best approach. While domestic regulation may increase the drive towards foreign providers it may also have a symbolic effect which will reduce this drive by making people more aware of the dangers of surgery, both to society and individual physical wellbeing. Keywords Cosmetic surgery Regulation Criminal la

Beyond price: individuals' accounts of deciding to pay for private healthcare treatment in the UK

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Delivering appropriate and affordable healthcare is a concern across the globe. As countries grapple with the issue of delivering healthcare with finite resources and populations continue to age, more health-related care services or treatments may become an optional 'extra' to be purchased privately. It is timely to consider how, and to what extent, the individual can act as both a 'patient' and a 'consumer'. In the UK the majority of healthcare treatments are free at the point of delivery. However, increasingly some healthcare treatments are being made available via the private healthcare market. Drawing from insights from healthcare policy and social sciences, this paper uses the exemplar of private dental implant treatment provision in the UK to examine what factors people considered when deciding whether or not to pay for a costly healthcare treatment for a non-fatal condition.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Qualitative interviews with people (n = 27) who considered paying for dental implants treatments in the UK. Data collection and analysis processes followed the principles of the constant comparative methods, and thematic analysis was facilitated through the use of NVivo qualitative data software.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Decisions to pay for private healthcare treatments are not simply determined by price. Decisions are mediated by: the perceived 'status' of the healthcare treatment as either functional or aesthetic; how the individual determines and values their 'need' for the treatment; and, the impact the expenditure may have on themselves and others. Choosing a private healthcare provider is sometimes determined simply by personal rapport or extant clinical relationship, or based on the recommendation of others.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>As private healthcare markets expand to provide more 'non-essential' services, patients need to develop new skills and to be supported in their new role as consumers.</p

‘Contextualizing and Critiquing the Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony’

Abstract The ‘prosumer’ has emerged to become a central figure in contemporary culture. Through the melding of production with consumption, both mainstream and progressive analysts conceptualize prosumption to be a liberating, empowering and, for some, a prospectively revolutionary institution. In this article, these fantastic associations are critically assessed using an approach that situates prosumption activities, including contemporary online applications often referred to as ‘cocreation’, in three social-historical contexts: capitalism as a political economy dominated by mediated abstractions; capitalist society as a hierarchical order; and alienation as a pervasive norm. Among other conclusions, we find that prosumption (particularly its Web 2.0 iterations), constitutes an emerging hegemonic institution; one that effectively frames and contains truly radical imaginations while also tapping into existing predilections for commodity-focused forms of self-realization

Sociomaterial Will-Work: Aligning Daily Wanting in Dutch Dementia Care

Legal and philosophical accounts of ‘the will’ seem insufficient when thinking about what residents of nursing homes dementia want, and how situations in which a resident wants something else than his or her care worker should be dealt with. In this chapter, I offer an alternative understanding of the will—namely as ‘done’ in sociomaterial interaction, in which it can be aligned by making it relational. Instead of dismissing ‘daily wanting’ of those living with dementia, my analysis enables thinking about it. Based on an ethnography of daily care situations in physical care provision in Dutch nursing homes for people with dementia, I propose the concept of ‘sociomaterial will-work’ to highlight how daily wanting is worked upon in the context of unfolding sociomaterial interaction. I describe ways in which care workers’ and residents’ attempt to align the other’s wanting with their own as a form of labour and as dependent on sociomaterial relations, namely by (1) sculpting moods and emotions, (2) managing attention and (3) creative negotiation involving time and materialities. I argue that we may learn something about good care from taking a closer look at these practices: in doing sociomaterial will-work care workers strive for a positive way of relating, seeking alternatives to nothing for neglecting the resident or exerting force. Indeed, sociomaterial will-work may sometimes fail, but, as is key to doing good care, even so, it keeps on trying

The sensorium at work: the sensory phenomenology of the working body

The sociology of the body and the sociology of work and occupations have both neglected to some extent the study of the ‘working body’ in paid employment, particularly with regard to empirical research into the sensory aspects of working practices. This gap is perhaps surprising given how strongly the sensory dimension features in much of working life. This article is very much a first step in calling for a more phenomenological, embodied and ‘fleshy’ perspective on the body in employment, and examines some of the theoretical and conceptual resources available to researchers wishing to focus on the lived working-body experiences of the sensorium. We also consider some possible representational forms for a more evocative, phenomenologically-inspired portrayal of sensory, lived-working-body experiences, and offer suggestions for future avenues of research

Investigation of cerebral autoregulation in the newborn piglet during anaesthesia and surgery

The relationship between cerebral autoregulation (CA) and the neurotoxic effects of anaesthesia with and without surgery is investigated. Newborn piglets were randomly assigned to receive either 6 h of anaesthesia (isoflurane) or the same with an additional hour of minor surgery. The effect of the spontaneous changes in mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) on the cerebral haemodynamics (oxy- and deoxy-haemoglobin, HbO2 and Hb) was measured using transverse broadband near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). A marker for impaired CA, concordance between MABP and intravascular oxygenation (HbD = HbO2 - Hb) in the ultra-low frequency domain (0.0018-0.0083 Hz), was assessed using coherence analysis. Presence of CA impairment was not significant but found to increase with surgical exacerbation. The impairment did not correlate with histological outcome (presence of cell death, apoptosis and microglial activation in the brain)