Gay men, Gaydar and the commodification of difference

Purpose To investigate ICT mediated inclusion and exclusion in terms of sexuality through a study of a commercial social networking website for gay men Design/methodology/approach The paper uses an approach based on technological inscription and the commodification of difference to study Gaydar, a commercial social networking site. Findings Through the activities, events and interactions offered by Gaydar, we identify a series of contrasting identity constructions and market segmentations which are constructed through the cyclic commodification of difference. These are fuelled by a particular series of meanings attached to gay male sexualities which serve to keep gay men positioned as a niche market. Research limitations/implications The research centres on the study of one, albeit widely used, website with a very specific set of purposes. The study offers a model for future research on sexuality and ICTs. Originality/value This study places sexuality centre stage in an ICT mediated environment and provides insights into the contemporary phenomenon of social networking. As a sexualized object, Gaydar presents a semiosis of politicized messages that question heteronormativity while simultaneously contributing to the definition of an increasingly globalized, commercialized and monolithic form of gay male sexuality defined against ICT

Design for existential crisis in the anthropocene age

What should be our orientation to the socio-technical as climate predictions worsen; ecological crises and wars escalate mass migration and refugee numbers; right-wing populism sweeps through politics; automation threatens workers' jobs and austerity policies destabilize society? What is to be done when it is not "business as usual" and even broken concepts of progress seem no longer to be progressing? We ask how to design for the common good, focusing on human needs for meaning, fulfillment, dignity and decency, qualities which technology struggles to support but can easily undermine. We juxtapose the design of computing that offers hope with that which offers only distraction, propose four modes to design for (being attentive, critical, different and in it together) and conclude with a plea to avoid tools that encourage a blinkered existence at a time of great uncertainty and change

The Evolution of the Sexual Division of Labour in Teaching: A Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec Case Study

North American studies of the sexual division of labour in teaching have stressed the connections between the development of urban school systems, the feminization of teaching and the development of occupational hierarchies in the profession. The fact of early feminization in most of rural Quebec and in several counties of eastern Ontario, however, revealed the inadequacy of these formulations, leading us to seek alternative explanations. These explanations are presented as they relate to the shifting age structure, ethnicity, and marital and household status of male and female teachers in selected regions of Quebec and Ontario between 1851 and 1881. Dans les études sur l’enseignement en Amérique du Nord où l’on analyse la répartition du travail selon le sexe, on a mis l’accent sur les relations entre le développement de réseaux scolaires urbains, la féminisation de l'enseignement et l’aménagement d’une hiérarchie des tâches à l’intérieur de la profession. Or les hypothèses qui y sont formulées ne conviennent pas parfaitement à l’analyse de la situation observée dans la plus grande partie des campagnes québécoises ainsi que dans plusieurs comtés de l’est de l’Ontario, où l’on constate une féminisation hâtive de l’enseignement. Cela nous incite à chercher d’autres explications. Celles-ci sont liées à des changements, parmi les enseignants des deux sexes, dans la structure par âge, l’origine ethnique, l’état matrimonial et la place de l’instituteur ou de l’institutrice à l’intérieur du ménage, comme le démontre la présente analyse de quelques régions-témoins du Québec et de l’Ontario des années 1851 à 1881

Users as professionals: A study of IT deployment and its relationship to professional Autonomy

It has been argued that the rise of professions in society has been on the increase for over a century, to the extent that they are seen as integral to post-industrial society. Yet, within information systems minimal research has considered users as professionals. Instead, professions and professionalism as units of analysis have usually been intertwined with discussions of IT workers and systems development. In this paper, we focus on professionals as a user group and consider the implications of the deployment of IT in such contexts. In particular, we attend to the influence of technology on a central feature of professional identity – autonomy. In order to do this, we discuss the deployment of a module of an enterprise-wide student information system in a department of a UK university. From this come insights into regulation through inscription, the deskilling of work, system acceptance in the face of self-interest, the retention of autonomy in a regulated environment and the overt exercise of professional power. Whilst the student information system had an effect on professional identity, within our study, it appears that any encroachment upon autonomy has, overall, been viewed as minimal or easily managed. We suggest that future work might focus upon much more contentious sites of IT roll out where professionals exist – where they feel and experience much more significant effects

Allelic expression mapping across cellular lineages to establish impact of non-coding SNPs

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Elinor Glyn's British Talkies: Voice, Nationality and the Author On-Screen

Existing accounts of Elinor Glyn's career have emphasized her substantial impact on early Hollywood. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to her less successful efforts to break into the UK film industry in the early sound period. This article addresses this underexplored period, focusing on Glyn's use of sound in her two 1930 British films, Knowing Men and The Price of Things. The article argues that Glyn's British production practices reveal a unique strategy for reformulating her authorial stardom through the medium of the ‘talkie’. It explores how Glyn sought to exploit the specifically national qualities of the recorded English voice amidst a turbulent period in UK film production. The article contextualizes this strategy in relation to Glyn's business and personal archives, which evidence her attempts to refine her own speaking voice, alongside those of the screen stars whose careers she sought to develop for recorded sound. It suggests that the sound film was marked out as an important, exploitable new tool for Glyn within a broader context of debates about voice, recorded sound and nationality in UK culture at this time. This enabled her to portray a distinctively national brand identity through her new film work and surrounding publicity, in contrast to her appearances in American silent films. The article will show that recorded sound further allowed Glyn performatively to foreground her role as author-director through speaking cameos. This is analysed in relation to wider evidence of her practice, where she reflected on the performative qualities of the spoken voice in her writing and interviews, and made use of radio, newsreel and live performance to perfect and refine her own skills in recitation and oration

‘Re-reading Raphael Samuel: Politics, Personality and Performance’

For British historian Raphael Samuel, history and politics were inextricable. Best known as the founder of the history workshop movement, the controversial historian took his stance on the democratisation of history-making, becoming an outspoken advocate for public history. Despite making a significant contribution to contemporary historiography, he remains a neglected, even disparaged, figure. This paper contends that the most significant aspect of Samuel’s historical work was not one or other theory of history or argument about the past but his entire way of being an historian. Samuel embodied as much as expressed his ideas, consciously using his personality as a powerful political tool. It is further argued that conventional approaches to intellectual history, focusing on textual outputs, do not fully recognise the significance of performative modes of thinking. Theoretical approaches to performance as identity offer important insight here but can be too schematic in their view of applied and enacted thought. A biographical approach, by contrast, provides the intimate perspective necessary to fully appreciate the fluidity and complexity of such a personality. The paper first situates Samuel in the context of his earlier life, focusing on how and why he created such a public persona and how he adapted it in response to changing circumstances. It then considers the implications and effectiveness of this persona by assessing how it was perceived and narrated by others, acknowledging, in the process, why different groups engaged with and interpreted it differently

Mind the gap between policy imperatives and service provision: a qualitative study of the process of respiratory service development in England and Wales

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Service Delivery and Organisation Programme. SDO/99/2005.Background: Healthcare systems globally are reconfiguring to address the needs of people with long-term conditions such as respiratory disease. Primary Care Organisations (PCOs) in England and Wales are charged with the task of developing cost-effective patient-centred local models of care. We aimed to investigate how PCOs in England and Wales are reconfiguring their workforce to develop respiratory services, and the background factors influencing service redesign. Methods: Semi-structured qualitative telephone interviews with the person(s) responsible for driving respiratory service reconfiguration in a purposive sample of 30 PCOs. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded and thematically analysed. Results: We interviewed representatives of 30 PCOs with diverse demographic profiles planning a range of models of care. Although the primary driver was consistently identified as the need to respond to a central policy to shift the delivery of care for people with long-term conditions into the community whilst achieving financial balance, the design and implementation of services were subject to a broad range of local, and at times serendipitous, influences. The focus was almost exclusively on the complex needs of patients at the top of the long-term conditions (LTC) pyramid, with the aim of reducing admissions. Whilst some PCOs seemed able to develop innovative care despite uncertainty and financial restrictions, most highlighted many barriers to progress, describing initiatives suddenly shelved for lack of money, progress impeded by reluctant clinicians, plans thwarted by conflicting policies and a PCO workforce demoralised by job insecurity. Conclusion: For many of our interviewees there was a large gap between central policy rhetoric driving workforce change, and the practical reality of implementing change within PCOs when faced with the challenges of limited resources, diverse professional attitudes and an uncertain organisational context. Research should concentrate on understanding these complex dynamics in order to inform the policymakers, commissioners, health service managers and professionals.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Clinical features of spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy

Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy is an X-linked motor neuron disease caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the androgen receptor gene. To characterize the natural history and define outcome measures for clinical trials, we assessed the clinical history, laboratory findings and muscle strength and function in 57 patients with genetically confirmed disease. We also administered self-assessment questionnaires for activities of daily living, quality of life and erectile function. We found an average delay of over 5 years from onset of weakness to diagnosis. Muscle strength and function correlated directly with serum testosterone levels and inversely with CAG repeat length, age and duration of weakness. Motor unit number estimation was decreased by about half compared to healthy controls. Sensory nerve action potentials were reduced in nearly all subjects. Quantitative muscle assessment and timed 2 min walk may be useful as meaningful indicators of disease status. The direct correlation of testosterone levels with muscle strength indicates that androgens may have a positive effect on muscle function in spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy patients, in addition to the toxic effects described in animal models