They Say You are a Danger But You Are Not: Representations and Construction of the Moral Self in Narratives of 'Dangerous Individuals'

This article is based on an analysis of narratives of 26 offenders with mental health problems living in the United Kingdom. It explores the impact of an ascribed dangerous status and the construction of the self as moral and responsible in response to this label with reference to the literature on denial, deviance disavowal and other “techniques of neutralization” and Goffman's presentation of self. Two dominant strands are identified in relation to the construction of moral self-hood: “Not my fault” and “Good at heart” narratives. “Techniques of neutralization” are widely drawn on, particularly denial of responsibility in the “Not my fault” narratives that seek to explain anti-social behavior with reference to external forces such as a hostile environment inhibiting their ability to control their lives. In contrast, “Good at heart” narratives draw on the essentially good and moral nature of the inner-self. Both are used as evidence of sharing and adhering to moral norms in order to present an acceptable and credible self.

Fasting and the female body : from the ascetic to the pathological

This paper will examine the literature on ‘anorexia nervosa’, and argue that it is underpinned by three fundamental assumptions. First, ‘anorexia nervosa’ is a reflection of the mismatch between true ‘inner self’ and the external ‘false self’, the latter self being the distorted product of a male dominated society. Second, the explanation for the severe fasting practices constitutive of ‘anorexia nervosa’ (a new social problem) is to be found within the binary opposition of resistance/conformity to contemporary cultural expectations. Finally, ‘anorexia nervosa’ is a problem which exists in nature (i.e., independently of analysis). It was eventually discovered, named and explained. This paper will problematise each of these assumptions in turn, and in doing so, it will propose an alternative way of understanding contemporary fasting practices.

Toward Self-Organising Service Communities

This paper discusses a framework in which catalog service communities are built, linked for interaction, and constantly monitored and adapted over time. A catalog service community (represented as a peer node in a peer-to-peer network) in our system can be viewed as domain specific data integration mediators representing the domain knowledge and the registry information. The query routing among communities is performed to identify a set of data sources that are relevant to answering a given query. The system monitors the interactions between the communities to discover patterns that may lead to restructuring of the network (e.g., irrelevant peers removed, new relationships created, etc.).