How Do We Control Dangerous Bodies?

Bodies that challenge social norms have been labeled “deviant”—think obesity, tattoos and piercings, etc. What makes a body not just different but dangerous? How does a society seek to control, modify, or even eliminate those dangerous bodies

Relational Dimensions of Service-Learning: Common Ground for Faculty, Students, and Community Partners

Instructors, students, and community partners often live in separate “discourse communities.” The authors conducted a study to investigate the issues at stake in the relationships among those three primary players in service-learning. Analysis of interviews with student-participants in service-learning yielded four primary dimensions of those relationships: Control, Involvement, Preparation, and Oversight. These were advanced as the beginning of a common language for bridging the disconnect among those separate discourse communities. Role theory was used as a context for the results and to frame remedies in terms of role boundary expansion. The authors offered practical suggestions to practitioners as well as directions for future research

Soliciting Client Questions in HIV Prevention and Test Counseling

This study examines a strategy, soliciting client questions, that HIV prevention counselors use to obtain a warrant for giving clients information about risk and prevention. If clients ask questions about risk and prevention, counselors can provide advice that is tailored to the client\u27s request rather than speaking in a didactic manner. It has been argued in previous research that this approach of soliciting client questions usually does not actually elicit questions. In this study, I show that rather than being routinely marginalized, clients do hear counselors\u27 solicits as legitimate opportunities to bring up previously unmentioned issues. Moreover, even if clients do not respond to the counselors\u27 solicits with a question, counselors can still use client responses as a means to reopen issues of risk and prevention

So Why Are You Here? Assessing Risk in HIV Prevention and Test Decision Counselling

This paper examines how counsellors attempt to assess clients\u27 risks for contracting HIV when they come in for HIV testing. Starting with Maynard\u27s (1989) proposal that an analysis of social problems should begin with an analysis of talk-in-interaction, I examine how a client\u27s \u27problem\u27 of being at-risk for HIV is made visible or not in HIV prevention and test decision counselling sessions. First, I analyse counsellors\u27 use of open-ended questions as a method for making the problem of at-risk for HIV visible within the interaction and how clients respond to those questions. Second, I analyse how the meaning of the clients\u27 risks is negotiated in the interaction as counsellors support or contest clients\u27 accounts for getting an HIV test

Challenges of Collecting Survey Data on the Mississippi Gulf Coast After Hurricane Katrina: An In-Depth Interview Study of Survey Team Members

The purpose of this paper is to offer a brief description of the unique context faced by a team of researchers collecting survey data on the Mississippi Gulf Coast four months after Hurricane Katrina (see Swanson et. al. this issue for more information on the larger study). Based on in depth interviews with survey team members, we discuss several challenges faced during data collection: locating subjects, soliciting subjects\u27 participation, and collecting completed surveys. We conclude by discussing the methodological implications of these challenges