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Medical uncertainty is recognized as a critical issue in the sociology of diagnosis and medical sociology more generally, but a neglected focus of this concern is the question of patient decision making. Using a mixed methods approach that draws upon autoethnographic accounts and third-party interviews, we aim to illuminate the dilemmas of patient decision making in the face of uncertainty. How do patients and supportive caregivers go about navigating this state of affairs? What types of patient–doctor/healthcare professional relationships hinder or enhance effective patient decision making? These are the themes we explore in this study by following patients through the sequence of experiencing symptoms, seeking a diagnosis, evaluating treatment protocols, and receiving treatments. In general, three genres of culturally available narratives are revealed in the data: strategic, technoluxe, and unbearable health narratives.

Not all pressured, greedy, and opportunistic individuals actually commit white-collar crime. So what exactly is the common denominator for individuals to commit white-collar crime? This study investigates the propensity of an individual to commit white-collar crime and advances personality as an explanatory factor. Questionnaire survey data is collected from 357 undergraduate accounting students in a later year accounting course at a large university in Australia. Personality is measured using the Big Five Inventory. Support is provided for the view that individuals scoring lower in agreeableness and lower in conscientiousness have a higher propensity to commit white-collar crime. While no significant main effect associations emerged for extraversion, neuroticism, or openness to experience, inspection of individual parameter estimates revealed a significant negative association between neuroticism and propensity to commit white-collar crime but only in certain circumstances.

This study explores the relations between home and family in times of a pandemic, transporting the family away from the family home and, apparently, from the family itself. Specifically, it focuses art, culture, and society by shedding light on the enduring role of family rituals in creating and sustaining family identity while affirming the role of information and communication technology (ICT), in both the construction and reproduction of the family dynamics amid pandemic times. Reflection is taken upon a live-by-Zoom art exhibition opening. Family photo albums and several artifacts are used to show the family history, and, at the same time, the installed objects and surrounding narratives invite others to imagine the artist’s family as well as each audience member’s own family. The opening took place in March 2021, during the second lockdown in Portugal. Methodologically, the chapter draws on data collected through direct observation and autoethnography. Inspired by an arts-based approach, narrative is built on storytelling sociology, while using writing as a method of inquiry and reflexive composition to overcome the limits of the personal narrative. By the end, it is argued that as families “live” at Zoom, family rituals too. Zoom platform reproduces the family atmosphere, opportunities, and constraints. Looking at the art exhibit opening as a family ritual allows one to think about how individuals experienced family gatherings during the pandemic, but also how art might generate such familial intimacies in such exceptional times.

For much of its peak popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, women in action films were relegated to the damsel in distress and/or the romantic interest for the male lead. This was particularly evident in action films where women were depicted as being petite and submissive, especially towards the heroic male. Rarely did women occupy the primary focus in action films. Nowadays women are more frequently occupying positions of creative power as producers and actors, and there are some notable examples of progressive female roles in modern film. Female action stars tended to occupy one of two roles, that of what Marc O'Day (2004) labelled ‘action babe’ cinema, using the colloquial and dismissive term ‘babe’ as an indication of the derogatory nature of the female action hero who was often just a supermodel with a gun. However, there has emerged another type of female action star, the tough, aggressive and physically capable female action star, such as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1992).

Yvonne Tasker coined the term ‘musculinity’ to define this new model of tough women; female action stars who appropriate what are considered traditionally masculine traits (developed muscles, aggression, confidence, leadership skills, bravery). The presence of athletic women in action films, especially when compared to their male counterparts, defies expectations for women, and as such provides a unique example to analyse in terms of gender dynamics. This is especially true of combat sports, where aggression is a feature of the sport and still considered a testosterone-oriented attribute. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, the peak of the male action star, martial arts and associated combat sports provided opportunities for many former athletes to transition into action films. Using Tasker's framework of musculinity, I will examine Haywire (2011) as a notable progression in the representation of female action stars and musculinity. Focusing on a case study of Gina Carano's role in Haywire, and her subsequent career narrative, this chapter highlights how perceptions of masculinity and femininity in both combat sports and action films have previously limited roles for women and how much that has shifted in contemporary filmmaking.

In this chapter we have broadly sketched the educational history of Aotearoa New Zealand to show that this historical backdrop offers a fascinating insight into contemporary debates. In the following chapters we adopt a thematic approach to the history of teacher preparation in Aotearoa New Zealand. We do not offer an institutional or chronological historical narrative, but rather, the chapters are interconnected as they re-trace, recall and re-tell this educational history. Our core thesis is that across the long history of teacher preparation these themes permeate the shifts and changes in educational policy and practice and that ruptures at particular historical moments are not unique. We draw on a number of historical examples to underscore the oftentimes personal impact of the wider policy environment and the educational stories of aspiring teachers. Importantly, we have documented the methodological approaches employed and the archival research that has influenced our reading of the materials.

Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

This paper investigates the case study as a research method. It examines its strengths, weaknesses, and criticisms. It describes important characteristics of the method and its important features, providing examples from the literature. It seeks to correct some misimpressions, and to point out overlooked potentials, new justifications, and further possibilities and directions. It points to features of the case study that would be particularly useful in studies of disability. The conclusion is that case studies, especially those focusing on verstehen and on special in-depth understanding, offer great potential in disability studies.