Negotiating Value: Comparing Human and Animal Fracture Care in Industrial Societies

At the beginning of the twentieth-century, human and veterinary surgeons faced the challenge of a medical marketplace transformed by technology. The socio-economic value ascribed to their patients – people and domestic animals – was changing, reflecting the increasing mechanisation of industry and the decreasing dependence of society upon non-human animals for labour. In human medicine, concern for the economic consequences of fractures “pathologised” any significant level of post-therapeutic disability, a productivist perspective contrary to the traditional corpus of medical values. In contrast, veterinarians adapted to the mechanisation of horse-power by shifting their primary professional interest to companion animals; a type of veterinary patient generally valued for the unique emotional attachment of the owner, and not the productive capacity of the animal. The economic rationalisation of human fracture care and the “sentimental” transformation of veterinary orthopaedic expertise indicates how these specialists utilised increasingly convergent rhetorical arguments to justify the application of innovative fracture care technologies to their humans and animal patients. Keywords: Fracture care, Industrialisation, Veterinary History, Human/animal relation

Rejecting ‘the child’, embracing ‘childhood’: Conceptual and methodological considerations for social work research with young people

This article examines how the social studies of childhood can inform social work research. The first half of the article considers how notions of ‘childhood’ as a social construction diverge from normative, uniform and universal ideas of what might otherwise constitute ‘the child’. The second half then considers this discussion in regards to social work research. It considers the extent to which childhood scholarship has been used within the discipline of social work and illustrates this point by drawing upon recent empirical contributions to the foster care literature in the UK

‘It made me realise that I am lucky for what I got’: British young carers encountering the realities of their African peers

Despite a growing number of studies comparing the experiences of young carers in the global North and South, little has been done to explore young carers' representations of their global peers. In this paper we examine the reflections of British young carers after having visited an exhibition displaying photos and stories articulating the caregiving experiences of young carers in Zimbabwe and Kenya. We do this to explore the role of safe and transformative social spaces in facilitating positive identity constructions. We draw on the essays and workshop material of 19 British young carers as well as 8 follow-up interviews. A thematic network analysis of the data reveals that British young carers, upon being confronted with the experiences of African young carers, saw their African peers as more marginalised, with heavier duties and with less state support. Their responses echoed victimising representations of Africa as poor and 'underdeveloped'. However, the exhibition material was balanced and also highlighted the strengths and agency of African young carers, which provided some of the British young carers with opportunities to reassess their own circumstances in a more positive way. We conclude that creating social spaces for young carers to reflect on self and others can contribute towards the development of positive young carer identities and resilience