Interviewing mothers: reflections on closeness and reflexivity in research encounters

Taking as a starting point the idea that a researcher's subjectivity is data and a resource for interpretation, I write about my own experience of combining motherhood and paid work, undertaking a psychosocial study of first time motherhood. I reflect on the emotional work involved in undertaking fieldwork and engaging with different texts about the maternal, when the research topic is close to the stuff of one's life. I then set this writing and the feelings it evokes alongside a case study from the research project, in order to explore how a researcher can notice herself, in research encounters with others, and with texts, in ways which make the reflexive self visible. The data I use are drawn from a project entitled Becoming Bangladeshi, African Caribbean and White mothers: identities in process, part of the Economic and Social Research Council's Identities and Social Action programme

Talking about breastfeeding - emotion, context and 'good' mothering

The benefits of breastfeeding are now recognised and promoted by governments and healthcare services internationally (WHO 2007),with feeding regarded as a significant part of the maternal role: in the words of the World Health Organization: ‘no gift is more precious than breastfeeding’. The idea that breastfeeding can be a ‘gift’ signifies the increasing, heavy cultural and emotional load of feeding for mothers. Feeding practices can be used to differentiate ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers, ‘high’ or ‘low’ social status and can also be associated with feelings of intimacy, estrangement, guilt, joy, failure or success. In this article we discuss the findings from the Open University's ‘Becoming aMother’ study (www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/ identities/findings/Hollway.pdf) in the light of these wider issues and current policy initiatives

Alabama’s resistance to marriage equality will be short lived

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court denied a request to stay the ruling of a federal district judge which had invalidated Alabama’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Despite the ruling, many of the state’s probate judges have refused to provide marriage licenses, and were also instructed not to do so by the state Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. Heather Elliott writes that the judges’ resistance is in part due to the fact that they face elections in a state where only 32 percent of the population favor same-sex marriage. She argues that Alabama is on the wrong side of states’ rights and marriage equality, and that the Supreme Court’s coming ruling on same-sex marriage will remove all doubt in Alabama, and across the country

Staying on Track from Paris: Advancing the Key Elements of the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 provides essential building blocks for universal action to address climate change. Now, much work is needed to breathe life into the provisions and commitments of the Agreement in order to realize the globally agreed vision to limit temperature rise, build the ability to adapt to climate impacts, and align financial flows toward zerocarbon and climate-resilient development. The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must continue to cooperate effectively to unpack and clarify the key tasks and activities outlined in the Agreement in order to provide a well-defined pathway to implementation. This paper takes an in-depth look at the Paris Agreement, highlighting important outcomes and the tasks and activities that now need to be undertaken to elaborate and develop the critical rules and processes under the Agreement. Ensuring that these rules and processes are strong and effective will be essential to promoting ambitious climate action and accelerating it in the coming years

The African Bushmeat Crisis: A Case for Global Partnership

Across Central Africa a commercial, unsustainable, and largely illegal hunting and trade in wildlife for meat has expanded in recent years causing immediate threat to countless wildlife populations and species. Currently, multi-national agreements and government initiatives created to address the bushmeat crisis in the region are unable to halt the extensive destruction to the area’s unique biodiversity . Although many of these agreements strongly support addressing the bushmeat crisis, they lack the resources and capacity to be fully implemented. Strong U.S. engagement in a global partnership, arising from intensive, complete, and wide-ranging bipartisan commitment would greatly enhance existing international biodiversity conservation efforts that prioritize the bushmeat crisis as the leading biodiversity threat across all landscapes in the region. The bushmeat crisis is not isolated in Africa. It has the potential to affect Americans and global citizens through emergent disease transmission from a growing international trade. Addressing global health threats is further linked through the bushmeat trade by additional U.S. government goals to support global democracy and international economic development

Human Vault Nanoparticle Targeted Delivery of Antiretroviral Drugs to Inhibit Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection.

"Vaults" are ubiquitously expressed endogenous ribonucleoprotein nanoparticles with potential utility for targeted drug delivery. Here, we show that recombinant human vault nanoparticles are readily engulfed by certain key human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), predominately dendritic cells, monocytes/macrophages, and activated T cells. As these cell types are the primary targets for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection, we examined the utility of recombinant human vaults for targeted delivery of antiretroviral drugs. We chemically modified three different antiretroviral drugs, zidovudine, tenofovir, and elvitegravir, for direct conjugation to vaults. Tested in infection assays, drug-conjugated vaults inhibited HIV-1 infection of PBMC with equivalent activity to free drugs, indicating vault delivery and drug release in the cytoplasm of HIV-1-susceptible cells. The ability to deliver functional drugs via vault nanoparticle conjugates suggests their potential utility for targeted drug delivery against HIV-1

Group Analysis in Practice: Narrative Approaches

This is the final version of the article. Available from Institut für Qualitative Forschung via the URL in this record.Working in groups is increasingly regarded as fruitful for the process of analyzing qualitative data. It has been reported to build research skills, make the analytic process visible, reduce inequalities and social distance particularly between researchers and participants, and broaden and intensify engagement with the material. This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on group qualitative data analysis by presenting a worked example of a group data analysis of a short extract from an interview on serial migration from the Caribbean to the UK. It describes the group's working practices and the different analytic resources drawn upon to conduct a narrative analysis. We demonstrate the ways in which an initial line-by-line analysis followed by analysis of larger extracts generated insights that would have been less available to individual researchers. Additionally, we discuss the positioning of group members in relation to the data and reflect on the porous boundary between primary and secondary analysis of qualitative data.With grateful thanks to the participants, without whose generosity in sharing their stories, the study would not have been possible. We are also pleased to acknowledge funding of the NOVELLA research node from the Economic and Social Research Council that enabled engagement with methodological, theoretical and substantive issues