36 research outputs found
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Introduction
This is the post print version of the chapter - Copyright @ 2003 The editorsThis book is about surrogacy and, more specifically, surrogate motherhood. It is a collection of essays that aims to provide a contemporary and international picture of a practice, traceable to ancient times, devised to solve the problem of childlessness. The collection, which explores surrogacy from a variety of perspectives including law, policy, medicine and psychology, is timely. For although there is nothing new in the notion that a woman might bear a child for someone else, there is some evidence that the incidence of surrogacy is increasing and technology has developed to make ever more complex arrangements possible
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The family law act 1996 in context
Full details of the published version of the book can be viewed at the link below. This chapter is available here with the permission of the publishers
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Changing divorce
Full details of the published version of the book can be viewed at the link below. This chapter is available here with the permission of the publishers
Parents Making Meaning of HighâConflict Divorce
This article reports on the findings of an empirical study conducted with 25 parents in British Columbia, Canada, who experienced a highâconflict divorce and later came to see the experience as having been transformative despite the difficulties they faced. While considerable research and policy initiatives frame highâconflict divorce as an individual and interpersonal problem, there is less reference to the fact that these disputes occur in a social, political, and legal context that also changes over time and across generations. There has been little research examining longâterm divorce outcomes, and no research to date examining how mothers and fathers who experienced a highâconflict divorce process overcome their difficulties and make meaning of their experiences retrospectively. This interdisciplinary study starts to fill these gaps. Following an overview of the study findings, the article highlights common themes arising from parents' narratives with a particular focus on agency, voice, and meaningâmaking across the life course. I argue that by taking a long view of the challenges participants faced, it is possible to move away from decontextualised understandings of highâconflict divorce
Pollyâs story : using structural narrative analysis to understand a trans migration journey
There is scant theoretical and empirical research on experiences of trans and its significance for social work practice. In this paper we premise that research on trans identity and practice needs to be located in particular temporal, cultural, spatial/geographical contexts and argue that a structural narrative analytical approach centring on plot, offers the opportunity to unravel the âhowâ and âwhyâ stories are told. We posit that attending to narrative structure facilitates a deeper understanding of trans peopleâs situated, lived experiences than thematic narrative analysis alone, since people organise their narratives according to a culturally available repertoire including plots. The paper focuses on the life and narrative of Polly, a male-to-female trans woman, and her gender migration journey using the plot typology âthe Questâ. We are cognisant of the limitations to structural narrative analysis and Western conventions of storytelling, and acknowledge that our approach is subjective; however, we argue that knowledge itself is contextual and perspective ridden, shaped by researchers and participants. Our position holds that narratives are not â and cannot â be separated from the context in which they are told, and importantly the resources used to tell them, and that analysing narrative structure can contextualise individual unique biographies and give voice to less heard communities
Who are these youths? Language in the service of policy
In the 1990s policy relating to children and young people who offend developed as a result of the interplay of political imperatives and populist demands. The âresponsibilisationâ of young offenders and the âno excusesâ culture of youth justice have been âmarketedâ through a discourse which evidences linguistic changes. This article focuses on one particular area of policy change, that relating to the prosecutorial decision, to show how particular images of children were both reflected and constructed through a changing selection of words to describe the non-adult suspect and offender. In such minutiae of discourse can be found not only the signifiers of public attitudinal and policy change but also the means by which undesirable policy developments can be challenged
Contribution of peat compaction to relative sea-level rise within Holocene deltas
Modern and forecasted flooding of deltas is accelerated by subsidence of Holocene deposits. Subsidence caused by tectonics, isostasy, sediment compaction and anthropogenic processes, combined with eustatic sea-level rise, results in drowning and increased flood risk within densely populated deltas. Many deltaic sedimentary successions include substantial amounts of peat, which is highly compressible compared to clay, silt and sand. Peat compaction, therefore, may contribute considerably to total delta subsidence. Existing studies are inadequate for quantifying peat compaction across deltas. We present a numerical peat compaction model calibrated with an extensive field dataset. The model quantifies spatial and temporal trends in peat compaction within fluvial-dominated Holocene flood basin sequences of different compositions. Subsidence due to peat compaction is highly variable in time and space, with local rates of up to 15 mm/yr, depending on sedimentary sequence. This is extremely important information for developing sound delta management strategies. Artificial groundwater table lowering may cause substantial additional subsidence. Subsidence due to peat compaction might even exceed estimates of relative sea-level rise, and thus, may seriously increase the risk of delta drowning and human vulnerability to floodin
âVideo Replay: Families, films and fantasyâ as a transformational text: Commentary on Valerie Walkerdine's âVideo Replayâ.
In this commentary I explore the significance of Valerie Walkerdine's paper âVideo Replay: Families, Films and Fantasyâ. I review its impact in 1986 and then discuss how some of its ideas about subjectivity and popular culture â specifically film - can be developed in the contemporary context. A recurring fantasy of Rocky II and its reception is that of social and psychological transformation. I address this theme by drawing on the work of Christopher Bollas to argue that Walkerdine's psychosocial analysis continues to facilitate, across a range of contexts, some of the transformational processes described in her article
'Working outâ identity: distance runners and the management of disrupted identity
This article contributes fresh perspectives to the empirical literature on the sociology of the body, and of leisure and identity, by analysing the impact of long-term injury on the identities of two amateur but serious middle/long-distance runners. Employing a symbolic interactionist framework,and utilising data derived from a collaborative autoethnographic project, it explores the role
of âidentity workâ in providing continuity of identity during the liminality of long-term injury and
rehabilitation, which poses a fundamental challenge to athletic identity. Specifically, the analysis
applies Snow and Andersonâs (1995) and Perinbanayagamâs (2000) theoretical conceptualisations
in order to examine the various forms of identity work undertaken by the injured participants, along
the dimensions of materialistic, associative and vocabularic identifications. Such identity work was
found to be crucial in sustaining a credible sporting identity in the face of disruption to the running
self, and in generating momentum towards the goal of restitution to full running fitness and reengagement
with a cherished form of leisure.
KEYWORDS: identity work, symbolic interactionism, distance running, disrupted identit
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Contact disputes: Narrative constructions of 'good' parents
The final version of this article may be accessed at the link below. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work, (2002) examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice and demand changes in the law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in a dominant welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it