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Contemporary health policy increasingly positions responsibility for the management of health with the individual which reflects newer neo-liberal discourses of health. Such an approach can be seen as problematic in the context of men's health, with men tending to be seen as largely 'irresponsible' towards their own health. This paper addresses this question by drawing on qualitative data on how men conceptualise responsibility for health. Whilst the desire to be responsible for health was borne by most of the men in the study, this was not always reflected in practice. There was also evidence of strategies that men adopted for either divesting themselves of responsibility for health or for legitimising lack of responsibility. In some instances, acting 'irresponsibly' was what defined participants as 'real men'. The implications of these findings for men's health policy are discussed with specific reference to the recent publication of Ireland's National Men's Health Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines teachers' experiences and displays of negative emotion as a means of partially exploring how identities at work might be formed and regulated. It uses the concepts of emotional labour and subjectivation to interrogate the negative emotions teachers may experience and/or express at work. It suggests that emotion display rules are developed and come to partially define the teacher self in tandem with overlapping, synthetically discussed discourses of the teacher as moral/caring agent, expert and purveyor of social control/social efficiency. The field of emotional labour is explored here using diary entries of teachers who were between their second and fifth year of teaching in Irish primary schools. Teachers' experiences are read with less of a concern for the original 'authenticity' thesis of emotional labour in order to foreground an analysis of how certain truths about teachers' emotions are legitimated and solidified in the labour cycle. It is argued that spaces for multiple teacher identities and interrogation of emotional display must be carved out in teacher education. This space might include an acknowledgement of ambivalence towards the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set within the context of current developments in educare for young children in the UK, the paper points to the importance of effectively monitoring such initiatives. However, it cautions that this should use collaborative methods and evaluations should relate fully to the aims of the provision, including those of the 'clients'. A case study of a needs analysis carried out in a childcare centre established as a cooperative venture by a womens group in Ireland is described. It demonstrates how 'professional' criteria, if applied too rigidly, can not only subvert the initial purposes of the development but also produce divisions within a group whose cohesiveness of purpose was previously the source of their strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]