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1 – 10 of 475Gabriel Abotsie, Roger Kingerlee, Andrew Fisk, Sam Watts, Rachel Cooke, Luke Woodley, Dawn Collins and Bonnie Teague
Comparatively, men have poorer physical and mental health outcomes than women, with a significantly higher suicide rate. Contributory factors are thought to be social and…
Abstract
Purpose
Comparatively, men have poorer physical and mental health outcomes than women, with a significantly higher suicide rate. Contributory factors are thought to be social and biological, leading to reduced access to health-care services. The study aims to develop and implement community-based support to increase awareness of and access to men’s mental health support networks and groups.
Design/methodology/approach
The project involved three key work-packages discussed in this paper: raising awareness of men’s mental health needs in health care, educational and community settings; collaboration between National Health Services (NHS) and non-NHS health-care support organisations to build multi-sector partnership working; and developing a supported sports-based community intervention aimed at men living with mental health conditions. The acceptability and feasibility of these work-packages were pragmatically evaluated through mixed-methods surveys and qualitative content analysis.
Findings
Overall, both community events and sports groups successfully engaged men living with mental health problems. Organisations interested in men’s mental health are continuing to engage in a partnership initiative. Community events were well-attended and received positive feedback, particularly regarding the educative and real-life experiences approach promoted in the events. The sports intervention is feasible and well-accepted by participants, who described feeling supported with their physical and mental health needs, with increased mental well-being reported.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitations of this project are that the authors only evaluated a football group rather than all work areas. The project collected outcomes relating to participants’ demographics and qualitative reflections of participating in the football group along with a retrospective survey of perceived benefits, but the project did not undertake a pre- and post-comparison of well-being outcomes owing to low completion of these measures. Future work could focus on collecting more pre- and post-measures related to well-being, recovery and inclusion and compare these with men not involved in the football groups or public events.
Practical implications
This paper discusses the development and feasibility of setting up community-based men’s mental health support networks, involving public events, partnership working and targeted-sports interventions. All initiatives were well-received and successfully attended by men living with mental health conditions. Evaluation of the programme revealed the value placed on education about mental health and the role that community sports interventions may play in men’s mental health care.
Social implications
This project has demonstrated three different ways of supporting men’s mental health needs in the community. Community public events were held to raise awareness of men’s mental health needs and issues were well-attended and highlighted the need for health promotion and education in this area across all the communities. The men’s football group demonstrated the feasibility of moving mental health support out into a non-clinical and more community arena in a way that men engaged effectively. Finally, the creation of MensNet has bought together disparate multi-sector organisations successfully to lead public health mechanisms to support men’s mental health needs.
Originality/value
This paper describes a new multi-disciplined approach to supporting health-seeking challenges among men, in particular, how partnership working across NHS and non-NHS sectors can successfully support an identified public health need pragmatically using existing services and organisations.
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Blake E. Angelo, Becca B.R. Jablonski and Dawn Thilmany
A body of literature and case studies has developed as part of the reporting, outreach and evaluation of the local and regional food system projects supported by grants…
Abstract
Purpose
A body of literature and case studies has developed as part of the reporting, outreach and evaluation of the local and regional food system projects supported by grants and other funders. Yet, there is concern that food value chains are promoted without adequately evaluating the viability of these businesses, or how these markets affect the performance and welfare of key stakeholders: farm vendors and local communities/economies.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviews and summarizes a comprehensive set of U.S.-based case studies focused on food value chains. We conduct a meta-analysis to systematically capture what available case study evidence tells us about: 1) trends in the viability of food value chain businesses; 2) the impact of these businesses on participating farm vendors; and, 3) the associated community economic development outcomes (framed in terms of ‘wealth creation’).
Findings
In addition to sharing findings from the meta-analysis, we demonstrate how the lack of standardized protocols for case study development is a barrier to learning about metric comparisons, best practices, and what impacts these food value chain businesses may have. We conclude with some recommendations of how the field can move forward to evaluate and share lessons learned using more uniform, project-driven case study development.
Originality/value
This is the first study to conduct a systematic meta-analysis of U.S. food value chain businesses.
Alerts health educators to the message that eating a healthy dietand taking regular exercise in childhood and young adulthood can help toprevent the bone disease…
Abstract
Alerts health educators to the message that eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise in childhood and young adulthood can help to prevent the bone disease osteoporosis in later life. Describes a teaching pack produced by the National Osteoporosis Society for primary school children. Summarizes evidence that school children take insufficient exercise and that many teenagers have a poor calcium intake. Reports on feedback from schools which have used the teaching pack.
Gary P. Radford, Marie L. Radford and Jessica Lingel
Using Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of considering the library as place, and specifically as…
Abstract
Purpose
Using Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of considering the library as place, and specifically as a place that has the “curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Foucault, 1986a, p. 24).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws upon a range of literary examples and from biographical accounts of authors such as Alan Bennett, Michel Foucault, and Umberto Eco to show how the library space operates as a heterotopia.
Findings
The paper finds that drawing together the constructs of heterotopia and serendipity can enrich the understanding of how libraries are experienced as sites of play, creativity, and adventure.
Originality/value
Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is offered as an original and useful frame that can account for the range of experiences and associations uniquely attached to the library.
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This paper aims to analyse the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. Pilgrimage was the first tourism mobility to come into existence…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. Pilgrimage was the first tourism mobility to come into existence thousands of years ago. In recent decades, its significance has decreased, as other tourism segments have gained prominence. Although modern tourism is regarded as a relatively new phenomenon, its origins are clearly rooted in the age-old practice of pilgrimage. Indeed, the development of tourism is difficult to understand without a thorough comprehension of the practice of pilgrimage in ancient times.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyses the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. The phenomenon of Pilgrimage Tourism and the nexus between the two mobilities has been experiencing tremendous changes over the past few decades and is still in the midst of an on-going process of transformation.
Findings
This paper concludes with the prediction that pilgrimage will re-emerge when the many similar segments – particularly, spiritual tourism, heritage tourism, religious tourism, dark tourism and secular pilgrimage – are re-identified as pilgrimage: a mobility for the search for meaning that contains an element of transformation that is often deep and enduring (as they were viewed at the dawn of humanity and for thousands of years).
Originality/value
This review has examined the development of pilgrimage tourism as a research topic, highlighting the importance of re-examining our contemporary usage of terms in order to allow for broader interpretations of different phenomena in the field of tourism. These conclusions are consistent with the current calls for a fundamental rethinking of the paradigms and the norms shaping scholarship on pilgrimage, dark tourism and tourism as a whole from a post-disciplinary perspective based on synthesis and synergy.
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Dawn Mannay and Jordon Creaghan
This chapter reflects on the process of conducting qualitative research as an indigenous researcher, drawing from two studies based in south Wales (the United Kingdom)…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reflects on the process of conducting qualitative research as an indigenous researcher, drawing from two studies based in south Wales (the United Kingdom). The chapter not only explores the advantages of similarity in relation to trust, access, gender and understandings of locality, but it also complicates this position by examining the problem of familiarity.
Methodology/approach
The studies, one doctoral research and one an undergraduate dissertation project, both took a qualitative approach and introduced visual methods of data production including collages, maps, photographs and timelines. These activities were followed by individual elicitation interviews.
Findings
The chapter argues that the insider outsider binary is unable capture the complexity of research relationships; however, these distinctions remain central in challenging the researcher’s preconceptions and the propensity for their research to be clouded by their subjective assumptions of class, gender, locality and community.
Originality/value
The chapter presents strategies to fight familiarity in fieldwork and considers the ethical issues that arise when research is conducted from the competing perspectives of both insider and academic. The authors focus on uncertainties and reservations in the fieldwork process and move beyond notions of fighting familiarity to consider the unforeseen circumstances of acquaintance and novel positionings within established social networks.
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Barry Eidlin and Michael A. McCarthy
Social class has long existed in tension with other forms of social difference such as race, gender, and sexuality, both in academic and popular debate. While…
Abstract
Social class has long existed in tension with other forms of social difference such as race, gender, and sexuality, both in academic and popular debate. While Marxist-influenced class primacy perspectives gained prominence in US sociology in the 1970s, they faded from view by the 1990s, replaced by perspectives focusing on culture and institutions or on intersectional analyses of how multiple forms of social difference shape durable patterns of disempowerment and marginalization. More recently, class and capitalism have reasserted their place on the academic agenda, but continue to coexist uneasily with analyses of oppression and social difference. Here we discuss possibilities for bridging the gap between studies of class and other forms of social difference. We contend that these categories are best understood in relation to each other when situated in a larger system with its own endogenous dynamics and tendencies, namely capitalism. After providing an historical account of the fraught relationship between studies of class and other forms of social difference, we propose a theoretical model for integrating understandings of class and social difference using Wright et al.‘s concept of dynamic asymmetry. This shifts us away from discussions of which factors are most important in general toward concrete discussions of how these factors interact in particular cases and processes. We contend that class and other forms of social difference should not be studied primarily as traits embodied in individuals, but rather with respect to how these differences are organized in relation to each other within a framework shaped by the dynamics of capitalist development.
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Dawn L. Rothe and Victoria E. Collins
The inherent violence of the patriarchal spectacle is at times decried through mass social movements such as the #MeToo or black lives matter movements in response to…
Abstract
The inherent violence of the patriarchal spectacle is at times decried through mass social movements such as the #MeToo or black lives matter movements in response to overt political displays of power or policies reinforcing inequalities of gender, race and ethnicity. While critical criminologists and feminists have spent decades on topics such as these, what is, more often than not, ignored is the banal patriarchal oppression women across the globe endure during their everyday lives. Moreover, women, most notably in the Global North and the United States in particular, assent to their oppression through the willingness of allowing the innate violence of an unequal patriarchal system of harm and violence. Our specific focus is on the routinisation of everyday life women participate in reinforcing the status quo of the patriarchal carceral state. We also suggest that social change must be more than reactions and demands for processes of change within the social structure that maintain the overall patriarchal state and structure of society: rather resistance must equal revulsion and rejection for a revolutionary social change to the innate violent system.
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William C. Finnie and Stanley C. Abraham
Strategy & Leadership contributing editors interviewed researcher Jim Collins. Collins is author of two influential books: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary…
Abstract
Strategy & Leadership contributing editors interviewed researcher Jim Collins. Collins is author of two influential books: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies co‐authored with Jerry Porras, and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t. Some key points Collins makes are: The transition from good to great all began with a Level 5 leader. The essence of Level 5 leadership is having an ambition for the cause of the work‐the outcome, the company, the organization‐above the self; also, at the same time, having the ferocious, frightening, terrifying willfulness to act upon that ambition. Most Level 5 leaders understand that their report card only comes in when their successor succeeds. In most cases, but not all, their successors were even more successful than they were. That’s different from the comparison cases, where a number of the executives defined their success in terms of their successor failing. All the good‐to‐great CEOs said “I am not going to answer the ‘What to do’ question until I’ve got the right people. And we will not determine where to drive this bus until we decide who should be on the bus, who should be off the bus, and who should be in what seat.” In the comparison companies, you have leaders who often came in with “the what” and then tried to get everybody to go there, whereas the good‐to‐great companies had leaders who began with the “who” and then figured it out from there. The idea that you first get the right team and only later figure out where to drive the bus is absolutely contrary to what everyone learned in business school. The great companies understood what they could absolutely be the best in the world at. And also, “If we can’t be the best in the world at it then we shouldn’t be doing it.” They wanted to have a profound understanding of their economics and how to fundamentally change them. And they put a high premium on things that they were very passionate about.
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Sophie Hennekam, Sally Macarthur, Dawn Bennett, Cat Hope and Talisha Goh
The purpose of this paper is to examine women composers’ use of online communities of practice (CoP) to negotiate the traditionally masculine space of music composition…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine women composers’ use of online communities of practice (CoP) to negotiate the traditionally masculine space of music composition while operating outside its hierarchical structures.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employed a mixed methods approach consisting of an online survey (n=225) followed by 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews with female composers to explore the concept and use of CoP. Content analysis was used to analyze the survey responses and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to interpret respondents’ lived experiences as relayed in the interviews.
Findings
The findings reveal that the online environment can be a supportive and safe space for female composers to connect with others and find support, feedback and mentorship, increase their visibility and develop career agency through learning and knowledge acquisition. CoP emerged as an alternative approach to career development for practicing female music workers and as a tool which could circumvent some of the enduring gendered challenges.
Originality/value
The findings suggest that online CoP can have a positive impact on the career development and sustainability of women in male-dominated sectors such as composition.
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