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In January 2017, the 'abortion pill' was finally used legally in Canada. This paper provides a sociotechnical analysis of the controversy surrounding RU486 in Canada, focusing on its entry into public discourse, 1990-1995. The case study draws primarily on statements made about the pill, both in Canadian media and in various actors' print communications. Using approaches from science and technology studies, the analysis identifies the multiple human and nonhuman actors, their discursive mobilizations of RU486 and each other, and their contingent alliances, illustrating how RU486 mediates and shapes the communication that attempts to define it. Unpacking the network's complexity illuminates how these sense-making practices established the early setting of the technology's path, a first step in understanding why Canada has been a laggard in making the pill available. The discussion illustrates the tensions, instabilities, and reversals in the network that have hindered RU486's movement from development to diffusion. Finally, the paper suggests a framework for future sociological research on controversial reproductive technologies in their shift from discursive to material diffusion, one that recognises the integral role of women as users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the advocacy of mothers and intended mothers in the fields of autism and infertility. Mothers and intended mothers have developed a special competence in dealing with professionals, and in negotiating the delicate balance between expert medical discourses and expertise grounded in their situated knowledge and experiences. Drawing on the social movement and public policy literature, we seek to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about the gendered role of women and mothers in these complex and emotionally charged policy fields. We argue that (intended) mothers are far more likely than other women to take on the major advocacy role considering their need to respond to bodily, social, and/or cultural 'failures' imposed on them by the medical establishment. Issues of access to fertility treatments and care for autistic children not only provide a vantage point from which to study their experience in the policy arena, but also to ask broader questions about the role of the welfare state and the shifting authority of experts in policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, public health has increasingly addressed what has been called the children's obesity 'epidemic', most notably through large-scale initiatives promoting physical activity. Through a discourse analysis the current paper critically examines such efforts in Canadian and Australian public health. Public health websites in Canada and Australia were examined for information concerning children's health, physical activity and obesity and explored for how these issues were represented in the discourse. Bacchi's (2009) 'What's the problem represented to be?' approach to discourse analysis guided our interrogation of the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying Canadian and Australian public health discourse, the ideological and political influences involved in its construction, and the knowledge base upon which it rests. The article calls for critical reflection on how children's physical and leisure activities are being advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public--private partnerships (P3s) with the for-profit private sector are increasingly used in Canada to deliver public infrastructure and support services within the health care sector (e.g., hospitals, clinics, community health centres). This paper examines the emergence and legacy of P3s in the Canadian health care sector, classifying them as a form of neoliberal accumulation by dispossession and discussing their inability to live up to proponents' promises. Economic and social costs are examined, and examples are drawn from operational P3 hospitals in Canada. The article also briefly examines how P3s have been affected by the recent global financial crisis, arguing that despite serious problems with the private finance component of these projects, ultimately the policy is poised to weather the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent critiques of contemporary obesity discourses that link 'modern Western lifestyles' to an 'obesity epidemic', the population's weight remains a central concern of current dietary guidelines. Food choices that are considered beneficial to maintaining a certain weight are understood to play a key role in one's health. This concern reflects medico-moral assumptions about the properties of food and what people should eat. However, the impact of obesity discourses on different individuals and social groups is rarely considered, although there is some evidence that people do generate, reflect and resist the norms and standards set for them, including those that relate to food/weight. In this paper, we will examine the perspectives on fatness and food choice amongst Black and White women and men living in Vancouver and Halifax, Canada. With this examination, we will challenge conventional assumptions about the singular 'modern Western lifestyle' that leads to obesity concerns by teasing out some of the social, cultural and political contexts within which people conceptualise issues regarding weight and make their food choices. By examining the experiences of both women and men we will also provide important insights into the gendered ways in which people engage with obesity discourses and the injunction to 'eat healthily' as a form of weight management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]