‘My life's properly beginning’: young people with a terminally ill parent talk about the future

This paper explores how young people who are living with a parent who is dying talk about the future. Drawing on a qualitative, interview study, I argue that young people are able to move imaginatively beyond the death of a parent, and in doing so, to maintain a sense of biographical continuity. While thinking about the future, most were able to generate an alternative to the ‘harm story’ typically associated with parental loss. Furthermore, the facility to engage with parental absence in the present enabled young people to make sense of living with dying, and gave meaning to their imagined futures. These findings suggest that young people's narratives of the future may act as a symbolic resource to draw on, albeit one requiring adequate material and social resources to construct. The paper extends the notion of continuing bonds derived from post‐bereavement accounts to suggest that relational experiences of the dead begin prior to bereavement, and may facilitate everyday living in anticipation of significant loss. Enabling young people to imaginatively explore the future may support them in getting by when they are living in these difficult family circumstances

Stories of success: Cultural narratives and personal stories of elite and professional athletes

Using a narrative methodology to explore the stories Olympic and elite athletes tell about success, we identified three alternatives to the dominant conception of success as the achievement of performance outcomes. In these alternatives, success is storied as: (1) ‘I did the best that I could’ – a controllable and sustainable story of effort and application; (2) ‘It’s the closest thing you can get to flying’ – a story where success relates to embodied experience and discovery; (3) ‘People I made the journey with’ – which prioritises relationships and connection between people. We reflect on three key insights: (1) success is a multidimensional concept, broader than the singular conception encapsulated within the dominant performance narrative; (2) through various narrative strategies, experienced athletes resist cultural pressures towards a singular conception of success; (3) for long-term performance and well-being, it is necessary to work towards multiple forms of success over time and across contexts

Influences on academics' approaches to development: voices from below

The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to explore faculty-based academics’ views on what influences their behaviours and attitudes towards their development. Informed by critical realist ontology, the data collection was carried out through narrative interviews with academics in two contrasting English Universities. Findings, or areas for reflection, have emerged about the constraints and enablements academics perceive in respect of their professional development. In particular, themes such as the significance of professional status; misaligned initiatives and priorities; the influence of supportive networks; and emergent personal, individual concerns have surfaced. The conclusion is drawn that the significance of agency raises the importance of responding to the ‘voices from below’

The discovery of ash dieback in the UK: the making of a focusing event

Why did the identification of ‘Ash Dieback’ (Chalara Fraxinea) in 2012 in the UK catch the national media, public and political zeitgeist, and lead to policy changes, in a way that no other contemporary tree pest or pathogen outbreak has?The identification of Ash Dieback in the UK is conceptualised as a successful ‘focusing event’ and the ways in which it was socially constructed by the media, stakeholders and the government are analysed. National newspaper coverage contributed to the way that the disease was understood and was significant in driving the political response. Ash Dieback’s focal power derived from the perceived scale and nature of its impact; the initial attribution of blame on government; the ‘war-like’ response from the government; and Ash’s status as a threatened ‘native’ tree. The Ash Dieback focusing event has increased the salience of plant health issues amongst policymakers, the public and conservation organisations in the UK

Abuse-related post-traumatic stress during the childbearing year

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75405/1/j.1365-2648.2004.03051.x.pd

Women bargaining with patriarchy in coastal Kenya:contradictions, creative agency and food provisioning

Gender analysts have long recognised that challenging existing patriarchal structures involves risks for women, who may lose both long-term support and protection from kin. However, understanding the specific ways in which they ‘bargain with patriarchy’ in particular contexts is relatively poorly understood. We focus on a Mijikenda fishing community in coastal Kenya to explore contradictions in gendered power relations and how women deploy these to reinterpret gendered practices without directly challenging local patriarchal structures. We argue that a more complex understanding of women’s creative agency can reveal both the value to women of culturally-specific gendered roles and responsibilities and the importance of subtle changes that they are able to negotiate in these. With reference to food provisioning, the analysis contributes to more nuanced understandings of gendered household food security and women’s creative approaches to maintaining long-term security in their lives