The BSE Crisis and the Price of Red Meat in the UK

This paper presents estimates of price functions for beef, lamb and pork for the UK economy which allow for the effects of the 1996 BSE crisis. Our estimates illustrate the importance of allowing for the joint endogeneity of prices in these markets. We show that the effects of this crisis had a significant negative effect on the price of beef and a positive and significant effect on the price of lamb. However, there appears to have been little effect on the price of pork

Shame as a social phenomenon: A critical analysis of the concept of dispositional shame

An increased clinical interest in shame has been reflected in the growing number of research studies in this area. However, clinically-orientated empirical investigation has mostly been restricted to the investigation of individual differences in dispositional shame. This paper reviews recent work on dispositional shame but then argues that the primacy of this construct has been problematic in a number of ways. Most importantly, the notion of shame as a context-free intrapsychic variable has distracted clinical researchers from investigating the management and repair of experiences of shame and shameful identities, and has made the social constitution of shame less visible. Several suggestions are made for alternative ways in which susceptibility to shame could be conceptualised, which consider how shame might arise in certain contexts and as a product of particular social encounters. For example, persistent difficulties with shame may relate to the salience of stigmatising discourses within a particular social context, the roles or subject positions available to an individual, the establishment of a repertoire of context-relevant shame avoidance strategies and the personal meaning of shamefulness

The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother

The Goddess is all around us: Her face is reflected in the burgeoning new growth of every ensuing spring; her power is evident in the miracle of conception and childbirth and in the newborn’s cry as it searches for the nurturing breast; we glimpse her in the alluring beauty of youth, in the incredible power of sexual attraction, in the affection of family gatherings, and in the gentle caring of loved ones as they leave the mortal world. The Goddess is with us in the everyday miracles of life, growth, and death which always have surrounded us and always will, and this ubiquity speaks to the enduring presence and changing masks of the universal power people have always recognized in their lives. Such power is the Goddess, at least in part, and through its workings we may occasionally catch a glimpse of the divine.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1094/thumbnail.jp

Book review 'The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood by Didier Fassin & Richard Rechtman

Fassin and Rechtman’s aims are not to explore individual experiences of victimhood or trauma. Instead their concern is with the social and political impact of the concept of ‘trauma’ as an increasingly used resource for making sense of a wide range of suffering. Addressing a multi-disciplinary audience, and initially taking a historical perspective, they explore ‘how we have moved from a realm in which the symptoms of the wounded solder or the injured worker were deemed of doubtful legitimacy to one in which their suffering, no longer contested, testifies to an experience that excites sympathy and merits compensation

The concept of shame and how understanding this might enhance support for breastfeeding mothers

The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of the concept of shame and the literature on shame management for understanding the experiences of women who struggle to establish breastfeeding. In particular we consider what this literature might suggest with regard to good practice when supporting breastfeeding mothers, illustrating our discussion with data from two previous empirical studies. There is increasing evidence from qualitative explorations of women’s experiences of breastfeeding that, for some mothers, breastfeeding can be a psychologically uncomfortable or even distressing experience. This seems particularly likely where there are difficulties establishing successful feeding which are counter to a mother’s previous expectations and where she may then feel she is positioned by discourses of ‘good’ or ‘natural’ mothering as failing both as a mother and a woman (e.g. Williamson et al., 2012). Previous discussions of the potential for breastfeeding promotion to cause distress for women who do not breastfeed or who struggle to do so have tended to assume that the problem is guilt. In response to this a frequently made point has been the importance of recognising that apparent ‘failures’ to breastfeed are not best understood as the mother’s omission or ‘choice’ but instead as a consequence of the many barriers to breastfeeding in Western societies. Thus the possibility is created for breastfeeding advocacy to target the many ways in which breastfeeding is made difficult for women, rather than blaming mothers. However, as Taylor and Wallace (2012) point out, women’s emotional responses may be more complex than has sometimes been assumed and for many mothers who struggle with breastfeeding or turn to formula milk, shame may be as much if not more of an issue than guilt. As such the identity work which mothers engage in to make sense of not breastfeeding (e.g. Marshall, Godfrey & Renfrew, 2007) can perhaps be viewed as a form of shame avoidance. There have been several attempts to distinguish shame from guilt, and we draw on Gilbert’s (2003) work as one of the most comprehensive models which usefully highlights the differing experience of relations with others when we feel guilty or ashamed. Guilt suggests a relatively powerful position where we are able to hurt another by our actions or omissions and we may then be motivated to make reparation. However, shame can be a much more destructive emotion and therefore difficult to manage. When we are ashamed we experience ourselves as inferior or flawed before a more powerful critical ‘other’, whether this is an actual person we perceive as devaluing us or a sense of a generalised ‘other’ in front of whom we are inadequate and lesser. With shame the focus is on a sense of a damaged and unable self, rather than on specific actions. Therefore an example of shame would be a mother whose distress about feeding difficulties arises from the possibility to her that these difficulties mean she is fundamentally flawed or inadequate as a mother, and possibly exposed as such before critical others. This is a rather different emotional experience from a sense of guilt towards her baby for providing less than optimal nutrition, though the two are not mutually exclusive. We discuss some of the ways in which shame and the avoidance of shame may challenge a mother’s relationships with others, including her developing attachment with the baby and her interactions with breastfeeding supporters. Drawing on literature on shame management and some of our own research data, we suggest a number of ways in which healthcare practitioners may be able to help women to manage or repair feelings of shame. For example, Brown’s (2006) research on women’s experiences of shame in a range of contexts suggests that establishing relationships with breastfeeding women which validate both their experiences and emerging identities as mothers is important for providing a space in which it is safe to acknowledge, examine and contextualise often unspoken and taboo feelings of shame. In this way, the research on shame management supports recent proposals for breastfeeding support to adopt a more person-centred focus (e.g. Hall Moran et al., 2006). Finally, in reviewing the usefulness of a focus on shame, we reflect briefly on the irony that the most visible examples of breastfeeding in public may paradoxically be viewed as shameful acts. This underscores the difficulties that women may face within contemporary Western societies in resisting shame in relation to breastfeeding

Mothers of lower socio-economic status make the decision to formula-feed in the context of culturally shared expectations and practices. Invited commentary on: Carroll M, Gallagher L, Clarke M, et al. Artificial milk-feeding women’s views of their feeding choice in Ireland. Midwifery 2015; 31:640–6.

• Within some communities women may already view formula-feeding as the obvious infant-feeding choice, even before pregnancy. Therefore, breastfeeding promotion should not be focused just on pregnant women, but on the wider community. • Exposure to other women breastfeeding may help to promote breastfeeding during pregnancy. • Research methods which enable more sustained engagement with participants may facilitate further understanding of the perspectives of mothers from communities where formula-feeding is dominant

Tracing the shifting sands of ‘medical genetics’: what’s in a name?

This paper focuses on the structural development of institution-based interest in genetics in Anglo-North American medicine after 1930 concomitantly with an analysis of the changes through which ideas about heredity and the hereditary transmission of diseases in families have passed. It maintains that the unfolding relationship between medicine and genetics can best be understood against the background of the shift in emphasis in conceptualisations of recurring patterns of disease in families from ‘biological relatedness’ to ‘related to chromosomes and genes.’ The paper begins with brief considerations of the historical confluences of, first, heredity and medicine and, second, genetics and medicine which, in a third section, leads to a discussion about a uniquely ‘genetics-based approach’ to medicine in the second half of the twentieth-century

Professionalization theory, medical specialists and the concept of "national patterns of specialization"

Studies comparing particular medical specialties in different national settings have not appeared in the sociology of the professions literature. Consequently, little is known about how local contexts actually affect the professionalization process and medical specialization. Are certain determinants of specialization active in some countries and not in others? Can some determinants be said to be always active? Two recent independent studies of medical geneticists in, respectively, the UK and Canada present a unique opportunity to reflect on earlier social-theoretical discussions concerning the determinants of medical specialization in the context of country-specific organizational frameworks. Placed side-by-side, the two studies lend support to earlier research that emphasize, first, conceptual and technological innovations in medicine as driving specialty formation, and, second, the dominant position of physicians in the resulting division of medical labour. Beyond this, however, each study throws highlight on local influences as being important with respect to particular courses of action or inaction at the national and regional level. In the end, what appear to be coherent sets of diagnostic and counselling services from a unitary, global perspective can also be viewed as loose networks of resource dependencies, personnel, and organizations which can be re-configured within local health care delivery systems