Doctors at War: Life and Death in a Field Hospital

[Excerpt from jacket] Doctors at War is a candid account of a trauma surgical team based, for a tour of duty, at a field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan. Mark de Rond tells of the highs and lows of surgical life in hard-hitting detail, bringing to life a morally ambiguous world in which good people face impossible choices and in which routines designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of highlighting war\u27s absurdity. With stories that are at once comical and tragic, de Rond captures the surreal experience of being a doctor at war. He lifts the cover on a world rarely ever seen, let alone written about, and provides a poignant counterpoint to the archetypical, adrenaline-packed, macho tale of what it is like to go to war

First record of Bethylidae (Hymenoptera) from Malta

Bethylidae are true aculeates, having a retractable sting with venom that temporarily immobilizes the larvae of their host. Similar to the closely related cuckoo wasps (Chrysididae), females track down a concealed larva, place one or more eggs on it, and continue their search. No nests are built and hosts are rarely transported to a safer place. Bethylid females usually place four eggs on the back of a host larva. The wasp larvae are ectoparasitoids, feeding on haemolymph with only their mouthparts inserted in the body of the host, until they have reached the required size to pupate. They than quickly consume the remaining internals of the host larva and start spinning a cocoon.peer-reviewe

Ontario Business Improvement Areas: Opportunities Gained and Lost

This paper examines whether Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) in the Durham Region are taking advantage of the opportunity for greater exposure and increased profits using indicators that measure five BIAs and one business association throughout the area. They include: the Pickering Village BIA; the Downtown Ajax BIA; the Downtown Oshawa BIA; the Port Perry BIA; the Downtown Orono BIA; and the Brooklin Business Association. The findings reveal that, with the notable exception of the Port Perry BIA, the BIAs in the Durham Region are not taking full advantage of opportunities for development and they do not have the same level of interest, intent, and support from the municipality as Port Perry. Ultimately, the biggest determining factor in the success of a BIA is the board of management that is in charge of its direction

Why there is no PTSD in Afghanistan

In December 2015, photographer Magda Rakita and writer Mark de Rond travelled to Afghanistan to investigate how more than three decades of war and endemic violence has impacted the nation’s psyche. Here Professor de Rond discusses the neuro-psychiatric hospital they visited, and the lack of PTSD diagnoses. An LSE Arts exhibition of 16 images from the trip is on display in the atrium of LSE’s Old Building until 9 December

The making of a classic ethnography: notes on Alice Goffman's On the Run

[book review

Sensemaking from the body: an enactive ethnography of rowing the Amazon

Drawing on real-time video, an audio journal, interviews and field notes from the first-ever attempt to scull the navigable Amazon, we explore the promise of carnal sociology to enrich our understanding of embodied organizational sensemaking. We investigate the body’s role in sensemaking from two vantage points: “of the body” and “from the body”. Using methodological and conceptual anchors provided in Wacquant’s carnal sociology, we contrast what each approach tells us about the nature and process of sensemaking. Doing so helps us outline a complementary approach to embodied sensemaking that attends to (1) how a “new way of seeing” the body as sentient, sedimented, situated, and capable of suffering enables a more holistic understanding of the role of embodiment in sensemaking; (2) the importance this then places on the “who” of sensemaking; and (3) carnal sociology’s broader methodological implications for organizational sensemaking

Good night, and good luck: perspectives on luck in management scholarship

It is not insignificant that seminal contributions to management scholarship have highlighted luck as an alternative explanation for performance differences between individuals and organizations. Yet it has rarely taken center-stage in scholarship. The principal purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the application of luck in the management literature and in such foundation disciplines as economics, sociology, and psychology. Our analysis finds five common perspectives on luck: (a) luck as Attribution; (b) luck as Randomness; (c) luck as Counterfactual; (d) luck as Undeserved; and (e) luck as Serendipity. We outline various ways in which research on luck may be advanced along each of these perspectives, and develop an underexplored, sixth, perspective on (f) luck as Leveler to provide a possible solution to such issues as social inequality and (unwarranted) executive compensation.The first author is also grateful for financial support received from Cambridge Overseas Trust, Jesus College (Oxford), the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the Ministry of Education (Taiwan) that sponsored his PhD dissertation

Where the wild things are: how dreams can help identify countertransference in organizational research

Where the study of organizations involves prolonged or deep engagement with informants, the research experience can generate psychodynamic reactions. Countertransference—or the redirection of a researcher’s emotional response onto informants—is one such reaction and can influence data collection, analysis, and presentation. The methodological question then is how to identify and act on countertransference reactions during research. Drawing on psychoanalytic approaches, we suggest that researchers’ dreams can serve as methodological resources in enhancing reflexive practice. We illustrate our approach with an autoethnographic account of 199 days of fieldwork with a Cambridge Boat Race crew and outline several recommendations to help organizational researchers keen to see how they and their dreams are implicated in their work