Deconstructing consumer discipline:how self-management is experienced in the marketplace

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build an understanding of what we term “consumer discipline” by unpacking the practices and strategies by which people manage and exert control over what they consume. This is facilitated by looking at the context of food, an everyday necessity imbued with sizeable importance in terms of its impact on personal well-being, and how it is experienced by individuals who must manage the constraints of a chronic illness. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality and theories surrounding the social facilitation of self-management, this paper analyses interviews with 17 consumers diagnosed with diabetes or coronary heart disease. Findings – By exploring how the chronically ill generate different strategies in managing what they eat and how they think about it; this paper outlines four analytical areas for which to continue the discussion of how consumption is disciplined and its conceptualisation in marketing and health-related research: “the Individual”, “the Other”, “the Market”, and “the Object”. Practical implications – The results signal to policy makers the aspects of health promotion that can be enhanced in order to improve self-management amongst consumers in the pursuit of well-being. Originality/value – This paper makes two contributions: it conceptualises consumer discipline as a practice that involves self-control but also comprises the capabilities to self-manage one’s identity and relationships through leveraging personal and social strategies across various contexts; and it identifies macro influences such as the market as negotiable powers that can be contested or resisted to help assist in one’s self-management

Home birth in Ireland 1993 - 1997: a review of community midwifery practice

To date little is known about the practices of domiciliary midwives and the outcomes of home birth in Ireland. The purpose of this review is to provide some background information on the situation for women seeking a home birth and to document the outcomes of home births in Ireland between 1993 -1997. Design: Descriptive analysis of prospective data collected from domiciliary midwives regarding women who requested a home birth between 1993 and 1997. Participants: The questionnaire was distributed to 15 domiciliary midwives; this included all the domiciliary midwives known to the authors to be practising in Ireland at that time. Findings: During this period, 585 women planned to give birth in their home with the assistance of midwives, 500 women achieved this. The spontaneous vaginal delivery rate for women who commenced their labour at home was 96.9% (n = 554). These women gave birth without medications or other interventions. 544 (93%) of the women breastfed their babies and 538 (92%) were still breastfeeding at 6 weeks. This is the first review of domiciliary midwifery practice in Ireland in recent years. They obtained data from 11 independent midwives on 585 women who planned home births. Findings showed high rates of spontaneous vaginal delivery and breastfeeding. There were 500 babies born at home with three perinatal deaths, including one undiagnosed breech delivery, one infant with abnormal lungs on post-mortem and one infant with Potter's Syndrome who was stillborn

Postcard: Building Thomas County Roads. Colby, Kansas. 4-13-\u2726

This black and white photographic postcard depicts road construction machinery in Thomas County, Kansas. Machinery scrapes a layer of earth to create a path forming a future road. The dirt is funneled along a ramp where it dumps out on the right side of the road. Three men stand on the tractor style machine and a group of spectators stand to the left of the machine looking down at the road. Automobiles and a caterpillar style tractor is in the background. Written text is at the bottom of the card. Handwriting is on the back of the card.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/tj_postcards/1960/thumbnail.jp

A retrospective public health analysis of the Republic of Ireland's Food Harvest 2020 strategy: absence, avoidance and business as usual

The concept of an Ecological Approach to health and including Health in All Policies warrants inter-sectoral and transdisciplinary collaboration to improve health determinants and reduce health inequities. Agriculture policies, which greatly influence food production and its environmental impacts as well as food availability and dietary consumption, are therefore of interest to public health. Increasing rates of non-communicable diseases linked to diets containing high levels of processed foods, increasing numbers of households unable to access nutritious food and the environmental consequences of the food system are amongst the major health challenges of today, both globally and in Ireland. In 2010, Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries published Food Harvest 2020 a roadmap for Irish agriculture for the subsequent decade prepared against a backdrop of rising diet-related ill-health and increasing environmental concerns. This article critically analyses the process of consultation and stakeholder involvement in the development of Food Harvest 2020 from a public health perspective. Publically available documents including submissions to the Food Harvest 2020 consultation process were the primary source of data. This study highlights a distinct absence of public health representation in the process, an avoidance of some key public health challenges and the dominance of a ‘business as usual’ approach

Parents’ Experiences during their Infant’s Transition from Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to Home: A Qualitative Study

Limited literature exists which examines how parents of infants hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) transition from their infant’s NICU hospital stay to home. This study examines the question, “What are the experiences of parents during their infant’s transition from the NICU to home? Grounded theory methods served as the paradigm to explore twelve NICU parents’ experiences during their infant’s transition. The basic social psychological process identified was “becoming a parent” which was based on the core problem “I’m not a parent.” Analysis of data contributed to a model described by the researchers as the resultant Model of Parental Progression that describes how the parents proceeded through their experiences of their infants’ transitions from the NICU to home

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Poetry

Alcohol consumption among university students: a typology of consumption to aid the tailoring of effective public health policy

Objective: Elevated levels of alcohol consumption among university students are well documented. Policymakers have attempted to combat this issue at a university, national and international level. Tailoring public health policy to effectively tackle alcohol use is crucial. Using Q-methodology, the current study aims to develop a typology of alcohol consumption in the Irish university student population. Setting: A large Irish university. Participants Hundreds of possible statements on types of consumption were generated from a systematic review and a set of one-on-one interviews. These were reduced to 36 statements, 6 statements which define each of the 6 previously defined consumption types. Participants were advised to scan through the 36 statements and fill the statements into a ‘forced choice, standardised distribution’. Following this, a 45–90 min interview was conducted with students to illuminate subjectivity surrounding alcohol consumption. Analysis was conducted using PQ Method and NVivo software. Principal component analysis, followed by varimax rotation, was conducted to uncover the final factor information. Results: In total, 43 students completed the Q-study: 19 men and 24 women. A typology describing 4 distinct groupings of alcohol consumer was uncovered: the guarded drinker, the calculated hedonist, the peer-influenced drinker and the inevitable binger. Factor loadings of each of the consumer groupings were noted for type description. Conclusions: This is the first study to propose ideal types of alcohol consumption among a university student population. Further research is required to investigate the degree to which each of these ideal types is subscribed. However, this typology, in addition to informing public policy and strategies, will be a valuable analytic tool in future research

Report on the Traveller women's food, physical activity and health study

Research report of Community Based Participatory Research project on Traveller women's food choice and exercis

Intrahemispheric Processing and Subcortical Transfer of Non-Verbal Information in Subjects with Complete Forebrain Commissurotomy

Subjects who had undergone complete surgical division of the forebrain commissures for treatment of intractable epilepsy were tested on a variety of cognitive and perceptual tasks. It was found that the right hemisphere performs as well as the left on a test of abstract concept comprehension when the stimulus materials are presented in a non-verbal format. In light of evidence of a selective right hemisphere deficiency for processing abstract words, this result is taken to imply a dissociation of language and cognition at a high level. A second experiment involved the nature of information which can cross subcortically between the cerebral hemispheres. With stimuli presented to opposite visual hemi-fields for prolonged durations, three commissurotomy subjects were able to make matches which convincingly demonstrated interhemispheric transfer and integration of cognitive information, including concrete and abstract concepts. Transfer between the hemispheres was equally successful in the two directions, though the pathway originating in the right and terminating in the left hemisphere may be more sensitive to some affective and semantic components of the stimulus. The information relayed subcortically is neither verbal nor imagic in nature, but appears to involve contextual or connotative associations of the stimulus. Implications for the evolution and development of non-verbal thought include the possible existence of a common bilateral cognitive system which permits interhemispheric communication of complex, if imprecise, associations that are distinct from the more specific verbal and visuospatial constructs of the left and right hemispheres, respectively. Finally, differences in the ability of the two hemispheres to perceive figure and background were described for four commissurotomy subjects. While the left hemisphere preferentially identified figures from briefly-presented picture compositions, the right hemisphere was equally adept at recognizing both figure and ground. The right hemisphere was also more sensitive to background influences on object perception, and was furthermore able to use "natural" gradient and perspective cues in evaluating an object's size and position in a field. In sum, the results demonstrate (1) the richness and complexity of non-verbal information and its place in human thought processes, and (2) the sophistication of the right hemisphere as a perceptual and cognitive system.</p