Child sexual abuse: private trouble or public issue?

Since November 16th, when ex-footballer Andy Woodward revealed to The Guardian that he had been systematically sexually abused by his football coach at Crew Alexandra, a number of other players have spoken publically about their own experiences of sexual abuse (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38107544). Once again British society is ‘rocked’ by revelations of the systematic sexual abuse of children by high-status men in positions trust and authority. Once again, we ask how this could happen on such a massive scale and without any interventions from the institutions that are supposed to protect children or from the communities in which they live

National self-injury awareness day: social justice, user-led interventions and challenging stigma

Self-injury – or self-harm as it is commonly known – is a coping mechanism whereby someone causes direct pain and/or injury to their own body. It is stereotypically associated with many of the following: ‘mental illness’, adolescent girls, Emos/youth subcultures, ‘personality disorder’, suicide, attention-seeking and sometimes violence or danger towards others. However, none of these accurately reflect the experience: self-injury is usually a private and secret experience, it is a means of staying alive rather than attempting to die, it is self-directed not other-directed, and it is not specific to any one group of people

Feminism, embodiment and self-harm: interview with Dr Kay Inckle (1 of 2)

Part I of interview by Ronda Daniel Kay is currently the lecturer and teacher for the course SO211: The Sociology of Health and Medicine, covering for Carrie Friese. She also lectures on other courses, including SO100 (social theory) SO201 (sociological analysis) SO401 (qualitative research methods)

Discussing PREVENT with Dr Kay Inckle (2 of 2)

Part II of interview with Kay Inckle by Ronda Daniel This discussion surrounded both the current political climate, as well as the current state of sociology, in the discussion of Prevent, ‘The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act’, implemented in 2015

Flesh wounds?: new ways of understanding self-injury

My research uses methodological and representational practices from the humanities and arts in order to develop a non-medical understanding of self-injury. The aims of the project are: to use creative practices to promote an accessible person-centred understanding of self-injury, from a holistic, harm-reduction, embodied perspective; to increase points of dialogue between all perspectives involved in and/or affected by self-injury; to illustrate both positive and negative responses to, and interventions in, self-injury and to highlight their impacts for the individuals concerned

On the cutting edge? : Marking gender, embodiment and knowledge

THESIS 7900In this thesis I use creative methodologies - a ?new writing? (Denzin, 2003: 118) strategy - to explore body marking practices (?self-injury? and body modification) in the context of gendered embodiment. The overarching question is framed in terms of whether sociological knowledge can provide a model of engaging with and understanding these body practices which avoids hierarchy, dualism and objectification. I aim to demonstrate that a feminist model of embodiment, which works through an ethics of both theoretical and methodological practice, as well as a relation to experience, can indeed facilitate this aim. Such a position engenders a radical shift in terms of normative research and representation practices and transforms the roles of the researcher and the reader, as well as the structures of evaluation and merit. It is precisely this refiguration of the norms of academic practice and its relationship to experience that connects with, and indeed emerges from, human embodiment. Overall, my thesis explores and represents the ways in which a feminist position of embodiment can be effective as a sociological strategy, and in particular a strategy that is ethically salient and experientially grounded in both empirical and epistemological terms. From this position body marking is no longer a stigmatised or objectified spectacle of the other, but is a process that is social and subjective, symbolic and corporeal, gendered and transformative, and fundamentally embodied, not unlike the methodological strategies that I employ for its articulation

Disabled Cyclists and the Deficit Model of Disability

Disability and cycling rarely appear in the same sentence and there is very little research about cyclists with physical disabilities. Nor, indeed, is there any acknowledgement of the experiences and needs of disabled cyclists in policy, practice or the public imagination. Nonetheless, cycling is a key form of mobility for people with disabilities, and cycling facilitates autonomy and independence of movement for many disabled people, as well as providing health-promoting physical activity. Drawing from qualitative interviews, this paper explores this gap in the context of the deficit model of disability and its impacts upon people with physical disabilities who cycle, many of whom who use their cycle as their main form of transport and mobility. It highlights the barriers that disabled cyclists face in terms of mobility, accessing cycling and the perceptions and attitudes which impede their everyday activities and underpin exclusionary policy, practice and infrastructure. Rejecting the deficit model of disability and recognising cycling as a key strength/ability for people with physical disabilities will lead to greater equality and improve the lives and experiences of disabled people

‘I am proud of my back’: an ethnographic study of the motivations and meanings of body modification as identity work among athletes with spinal cord injury

Little is known about why disabled athletes choose to modify their bodies and the meanings that these modifications have for them. Drawing on data from a larger 4-year ethnographic study, we focus on the motivations and meanings of five athletes who had become disabled due to spinal cord injury (SCI) for tattooing their bodies in specific ways. Our analysis illuminates the following key themes as being significant in the body modification choices of those involved: re-inscribing identity, subverting the ableist stare and embodying disability pride, articulating gendered sexuality, and enabling the process of narrative mapping between pre- and post-spinal cord injury periods. In considering these themes we reveal some important contrasts between ablebodied and disabled forms of engagement with body modification practices

Who is “Us” in “Nothing About Us Without US”? Rethinking the Politics of Disability Research.

No abstract available