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This chapter examines the surgical body modification experiences of transgender and cisgender people in the United States. It analyzes how surgery consumers with different gendered histories pursue “enhanced” embodiment. Both cisgender and transgender people obtain similar surgeries, but their procedures are differently regulated. Based on 40 in-depth interviews, this chapter compares the presurgical and postsurgical experiences of transgender and cisgender people. The findings show that cisgender and transgender people felt similarly about their bodies before surgery and reported corresponding cosmetic and psychological motivations for surgery. Both groups also had comparable postsurgical outcomes and used surgery to actualize a more desirable gendered embodiment. Ultimately, surgery resulted in changed gendered embodiment that enhanced the self for both groups. It could be psychologically transformative for cisgender people and provide more of a cosmetic effect for transgender people. These findings complicate disparate regulations of transgender and cisgender surgeries. They highlight surgeries as body technologies that enhance gendered embodiment allowing both cisgender and transgender consumers to articulate gendered concepts of the self.

Plastic seems to be getting a universally bad press at the moment with the current opinion being that plastic is incompatible with sustainability. In this chapter the nature of plastic or sustainability and of social responsibility are examined and redefined. The conclusion is that it is not plastic which is irresponsible but rather people and business which need to change. In doing so a number of seemingly diverse topics are considered and examined to show their relevance to this argument.

This paper describes a modelling process the objective of which was to make the highly abstract concept of core competence practical. The aim is to identify competences through the use of a service-process model by analyzing what they reflect – the service quality. Core competence is defined, and a conceptual model is presented. Competences are classified on three levels in a corporate setting and the connections drawn to service quality. Empirical evidence is provided by a case in the health-care sector in which competences are identified through the use of the service-process model in high-performance, professional services. The service-process model in surgical medical services is presented. Critical elements in the service-quality experience are identified and core competences are identified based on service quality as a reflection of them and their management.

This chapter introduces the subject matter of this book and clearly depicts the dichotomous nature of plastic: it is both problematic because of the pollution caused and beneficial because of the benefits it provides. This is set within the context of sustainability, being probably the key concern of the present. It highlights the volume on plastic in existent and the possible consequences from a lack of biodegradability. In doing so, it sets the context for the contents of the book.

In this chapter I explore how conflicting discursive claims made by the medical community are consequential for bariatric weight loss surgery patients. Bariatric surgery has become increasingly common in the United States since the 1990s, with over 177,000 Americans undergoing surgery in 2006. Despite the surgery's growing popularity, the US medical community does not wholeheartedly endorse the surgery. Rather, different members of the medical community espouse contradictory evaluations of weight loss surgery. I broadly characterize this intra-medical community controversy and, then, discuss how conflicting claims have helped shape the bariatric surgery industry's discursive conception of an “ideal patient.” Next, I analyze actual patients’ negotiations of the ideal patient archetype, and find that patients’ responses follow three paths: embracing the ideal, having a mixed response to the ideal, and strategically complying with the ideal. As patients are compelled to grapple with the ideal archetype in order to access surgery, I conclude that the ideal archetype acts as a discursive frame connecting individual patients to broad bariatric surgery discourses.

This chapter analyzes the tourism industry from national and regional perspectives, in order to understand the past and current trends in Costa Rica’s positioning and branding attributes and strategies for tourism development. The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive comprehensive literature review of academic research on country branding; and so it is by all means a case study as it describes the evolution of the tourism industry in Costa Rica – including the transformative stages the country went through since the 1980s – as planned tourism national management programs evolved toward reaching the target of creating a nature-based tourism brand. The medical industry and then medical tourism industries are analyzed in a global basis and the US market is examined in detail because of its potential to develop a new complementary niche for Costa Rica’s tourism industry. The chapter intends to asses Costa Rica’s potential to become a country brand in medical tourism, leveraged on its natural tourism destination branding status quo.