Risk definition and the struggle for legitimation: a case study of Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh, India

This article explores the struggle for legitimation associated with the attempt to define the risk of Bt cotton, a genetically modified crop, in Andhra Pradesh, India. Beck asserts that, given the uncertainty associated with risk society, efforts to define risk are creating the need for a new political culture. This article argues that this political culture emerges from attempts to legitimate power within risk definition. This is examined using critical discourse analysis on interview excerpts with key figures in the Bt cotton debate. Legitimation is explored using the categories of legitimation developed by Van Leeuwen. These are (a) authorisation; (b) moral evaluation; (c) rationalisation; and (d) mythopoesis. The analysis highlights that the political culture which emerges in response to risk society is in a state of constant flux and contingent upon the ongoing struggle for legitimation with regard to the definition of risk.

Hospital clinicians information behaviour and attitudes towards the 'Clinical Informationist': an Irish survey

Background: Hospital clinicians are increasingly expected to practice evidence-based medicine (EBM) in order to minimize medical errors and ensure quality patient care, but experience obstacles to information-seeking. The introduction of a Clinical Informationist (CI) is explored as a possible solution. Aims:  This paper investigates the self-perceived information needs, behaviour and skill levels of clinicians in two Irish public hospitals. It also explores clinicians perceptions and attitudes to the introduction of a CI into their clinical teams. Methods: A questionnaire survey approach was utilised for this study, with 22 clinicians in two hospitals. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics. Results: Analysis showed that clinicians experience diverse information needs for patient care, and that barriers such as time constraints and insufficient access to resources hinder their information-seeking. Findings also showed that clinicians struggle to fit information-seeking into their working day, regularly seeking to answer patient-related queries outside of working hours. Attitudes towards the concept of a CI were predominantly positive. Conclusion: This paper highlights the factors that characterise and limit hospital clinicians information-seeking, and suggests the CI as a potentially useful addition to the clinical team, to help them to resolve their information needs for patient care.

Women's contribution to the development of the English novel: 1621-1818

Women's contribution to literature is no arbitrary or artificial distinction. However much the reformer may welcome, or the conservative lament, the growth of a harmonious sharing of ideals between men and women, that growth has been a hard-fought struggle. It has been an escape from a prison, which, when it did not entirely shut out the greater world, at least enclosed a little world of education meant for women, literature adapted to the supposed limitations of their intellect, and a course of action prescribed by the other sex. To show how the literary efforts of women developed and justified their claims to free activity is the purpose of this thesis.

The intra-Traveller debate on ‘Traveller ethnicity’ in the Republic of Ireland. A critical discourse analysis

This dissertation assesses from an under-explored angle the enduring contention over Travellers’ ethnic recognition in the Republic of Ireland, particularly over the last decade. The novelty of this study concerns not only its specific focus on and engagement with the debate on ‘Traveller ethnicity’ among Traveller activists. It also pertains to the examination of Travellers’ arguments for and against ethnicity in light of critical theorisations as well as insights from identity politics. Furthermore, the adoption of a Critical Discourse Analytical framework offers new perspectives to this controversy and its potential implications. Finally, this thesis’ relevance extends beyond the contention on ‘Traveller ethnicity’ in itself. It also draws attention to the complex dynamics of colonisation and appropriation between the global and the local. Particularly, it points to the interplay between international human rights discourses and the local ones, formulated by NGOs struggling for equality. In this way it sheds light on more general issues such as the dialectical potential of human rights discourses: the benefits and pitfalls of framing recognition claims in the legalistic terms of human rights. In this study it is argued that the contention on ‘Traveller ethnicity’ defies a simplistic polarisation between Irish Travellers and the Irish State since it has been simultaneously played out within the Travelling community. Specifically, this study explores how ‘Traveller ethnicity’ has been introduced, embraced, promoted and contested within Traveller politics to the point of becoming a hotly debated and divisive issue among Traveller activists and at the heart of the community itself. Putting Traveller activists centre-stage, their discourses for and against ‘Traveller ethnicity’ are examined and assessed against one another and their potential implications for Traveller politics, policies and identities are pointed out. Contending discourses are historically contextualised as the product of specific structural, material and discursive configurations of power and socio-economic relations within Irish society. Discourses for and against ‘Traveller ethnicity’ are assessed as being significant beyond the representational level. They are regarded as contributing to dialectically constitute Travellers’ ways of being, representing and acting. Furthermore these discourses are considered as sites and means of power struggles, whose stakes are not only words, but relate to issues of power and leadership within the Travelling community; adjudications over material resources; the adoption of certain policy approaches over others; and, finally, the consolidation of certain subject positions over others for Travellers to draw upon and relate to mainstream society. This study highlights an ongoing ideological struggle for the naturalisation of ‘Traveller ethnicity’ as a self-evident ‘fact’, which involves no active choice by Travellers themselves. Overall, ‘Traveller ethnicity’ appears to constitute an enduring source of dilemmas for the Travelling community. These revolve around the contradictory potential of ethnicity claims-making —both its perils and advantages— and its status as a potent political strategic resource that can both challenge and reinforce existing power relations, policies and identities.

The legitimation of risk and democracy: A case study of Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh, India

This thesis explores the inter-related attempts to secure the legitimation of risk and democracy with regard to Bt cotton, a genetically modified crop, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The research included nine months of ethnographic fieldwork, extensive library and newspaper research, as well as university attendance in India, undertaken between June, 2010 and March, 2011. This comparative study (involving organic, NPM and Bt cotton cultivation) was conducted in three villages in Telangana, a region which was granted secession from Andhra Pradesh in July, 2013, and in Hyderabad, the state capital. Andhra Pradesh is renowned for its agrarian crisis and farmer suicides, as well as for the conflict which Bt cotton represents. This study adopts the categories of legitimation developed by Van Leeuwen (2007; 2008) in order to explore the theory of risk society (Beck, 1992; 1994; 1999; 2009), and the Habermasian (1996: 356-366) core-periphery model as means of theoretically analysing democratic legitimacy. The legitimation of risk and democracy in relation to Bt cotton refers to normative views on the way in which power should be exercised with regard to risk differentiation, construction and definition. The analysis finds that the more legitimate the exercise of power, the lower the exposure to risk as a concern for the collective. This also has consequences for the way in which resources are distributed, knowledge constructed, and democratic praxis institutionalised as a concern for social and epistemic justice. The thesis argues that the struggle to legitimate risk and democracy has implications not only for the constitution of the new state of Telangana and the region’s development, but also for the emergence of global society and the future development of humanity as a whole.

Prostate cancer treatment as an embodied rite of passage: impotence and incontinence as challenges to status reversal and reintegration

Introduction and Rationale: A central argument in the thesis is that performative acts of control, sexual potency and spontaneity are central to the continuous construction of embodied masculine identities. The acts of control, and particularly issues of spontaneity, are central to understandings and addressing the difficulties men face at varying levels of embodied identity. Using Watson’s (2000) ‘Male body schema’, I will explore the challenges and opportunities men face when negotiating normative, pragmatic, and experiential embodiment. I will later then explore the importance of these levels of embodiment to achieving visceral embodiment; or what I would define as a renewed unconscious satisfaction and ability to achieve and maintain normative, pragmatic and experiential forms of embodiment. Purpose and Objectives: Using the concept of liminality, and permanent liminality, the thesis explores how we can interpret and understand men’s experience of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, and their struggle to regain power and control in the context of diagnosis, and also the side effects to treatment. The strategies men adopt in seeking out personalised medical programmes of treatment with their doctors are explored in detail. The power and control that can be exercised over medical professionals and treatment options is demonstrated. Method: Collecting responses online from prostate specific discussion boards via gatekeepers, and from interviews on the ‘health talk’ online database, three intersecting conceptual categories - liminality, masculinity and the body/embodiment - are combined in this research. Liminality and ‘time’ are directly linked to notions of ‘success’ and ‘outcome’ during the treatment process, and mark distinct points at which men, and their families, expect measures or limits to have been reached. Exploring liminality within the context of Turner’s ‘rites of passage’, I explore the difficulty men face in concluding the third stage of the rites; reintegration. Results: Prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, impotence and incontinence, in particular, have profound implications for the continuous construction of embodied masculine identities, and thus identity in general, making the construction of hegemonic ideals in the context of a highly ‘performative’ society highly troublesome. The issue of ‘spontaneity’ in the construction of various forms of embodied identities is of particular concern for men who contributed to this study.

Within the carnal: re-reading Merleau-Ponty through the language of drawing

In order to present visual art as a paradigm for philosophy, Merleau-Ponty investigated the creative processes of artists whose work corresponded closely with his philosophical ideas. His essays on art are widely valued for emphasising process over product, and for challenging the primacy of the written word in all spheres of human expression. While it is clear that he initially favoured painting, Merleau-Ponty began to develop a much deeper understanding of the complexities of how art is made in his late work in parallel with his advancement of a new ontology. Although his ontology remains unfinished and only exists as working notes and a manuscript entitled The Visible and Invisible, Merleau-Ponty had begun to appreciate the fundamental role drawing plays in the making of art and the creation of a language of expression that is as vital as the written or spoken word. Through an examination of Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished manuscript and working notes my thesis will investigate his working methods and use of materials and also explore how he processed his ideas by using my own art practice as the basis of my research. This research will take the form of an inquiry into how the unfinished and incomplete nature of text and artworks, while they are still ‘works in progress’, can often reveal the more human and carnal components of creative processes. Applying my experience as a practitioner and a teacher in an art school, I focus on the significance of drawing practice for Merleau-Ponty’s later work, in order to rebalance an overemphasis on painting in the literature. Understanding the differences between these two art forms, and how they are taught, can offer an alternative engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s later work and his struggle to find a language to express his developing new ontology. In addition, by re-reading his work through the language of drawing, I believe we gain new insights which reaffirm Merleau-Ponty's relevance to contemporary art making and aesthetics.