Search

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. This ethnographic portrayal is based on the authors' experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through in-depth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. They unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere.

This study relies on participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore how StreetWise, an organization with a newspaper by the same name, mobilizes symbolic and material support for people without homes or those at risk. Pragmatism is used to understand how StreetWise ameliorates the experience of homelessness by building community. In stark contrast to forces that erase 'the homeless' from the public scene, StreetWise integrates people without homes, as vendors, into community life by providing employment and raising awareness about poverty-related issues. Through its structure, mission, and business plan StreetWise encourages an engaged citizenry and enhances civic discourses. StreetWise provides scholars with a context within which to understand the reflexive and interactive organization-society relationships that strive to support a democratic way of life. Keywords: Democracy; Community; Organizing; Homelessness; Poverty; Pragmatism

To engage in parrhesia is to function as a truth-teller. While Foucault (2001) outlined different types of parrhesia identified by the Greeks, the five elements of parrhesia remain constant yet context-specific: frankness, danger, criticism, duty, and truth. Foucault (2001) argued that 'real parrhesia, in its positive, critical sense does not exist where democracy exists' (p. 83). I claim that parrhesia can exist in democratic institutions and, in fact, is a process that members of the public should demand from public actors. To illustrate this claim, I analyze three Malcolm X speeches, 'Black Man's History,' 'The Ballot or the Bullet,' and 'After the Bombing' and argue that while he did not start out as a parrhesiastes, he ended his life as one who spoke the truth in a democratic society.

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. Our ethnographic portrayal is based on our experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through indepth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. We unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere. Keywords: Narrative; Disability; Aesthetic; Dialectics

No longer is there a question of whether the football World Cup is an immense media spectacle; instead, the question now is how immense the World Cup is in the overall human experience. Despite all the global excitement related to the World Cup, the bulk of the general U.S. public is seemingly exempt from the charms of the World Cup. This article examines American media coverage of the 2010 FIFA Men's World Cup. A qualitative content analysis identified 6 major themes in U.S. popular-press coverage of the event in South Africa, highlighting the communicative undercurrents of media discussions in order to comprehend the disconnect between American attitudes toward the World Cup and those held by the rest of the world. Themes of media discourse range from the increase in participation of Americans in soccer to resistance to mainstreaming soccer in popular culture to how soccer affects cultural literacy. Overall, the results indicate some enthusiasm for World Cup soccer while outlining stronger resistance for the sport in general. Potential future research projects related to this line of inquiry are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of constitution, particularly the Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) perspective, currently lacks adequate consideration of how power manifests in ongoing, dynamic, material–symbolic co-constitution. This article aims to locate and understand power in the sociomaterial realities of work. I position democratic work practices as transcendent of symbolic-material dualisms and investigate those practices via a co-constitutive, integrated approach. This critical-interpretive analysis of boundary work illuminates the non-neutral constitutive properties of sociomateriality in action. Findings coalesce around three themes: (a) material objects and notions of success, (b) sites of participation, and (c) bodies and engaged citizenry. The materialities of homelessness, along with those of “non-homelessness,” co-constitute conditions that actively work to maintain homelessness’ existence and restrict the democratic possibilities of work. To understand the complex connections of materiality and symbols in constitutive entanglements, I propose communicative instantiation as a conceptual-practical site for investigations of constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To describe the population-based rates of immediate breast reconstruction (IBR) for all women undergoing mastectomy for treatment or prophylaxis of breast cancer in the past decade, and to evaluate geographic, institutional, and patient factors that influence use in the publically funded Canadian health care system., Methods: This population-based retrospective cohort study used administrative data that included 28,176 women who underwent mastectomy (25,141 mastectomy alone and 3,035 IBR) between April 1, 2002, and March 31, 2012, in Ontario, Canada. We evaluated factors associated with IBR by using a multivariable logistic regression model with the generalized estimating equation approach., Results: The population-based, age-adjusted IBR rate increased from 5.1 procedures to 8.7 in 100,000 adult women (43.7%; P < .001), and the increase was greatest for prophylactic mastectomy or therapeutic mastectomy for in situ breast cancer (78.6%; P < .001). Women who lived in neighborhoods with higher median income had significantly increased odds of IBR compared with mastectomy alone (odds ratio [OR], 1.71; 95% CI, 1.47 to 2.00), and immigrant women had significantly lower odds (OR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.78). A patient had nearly twice the odds of receiving IBR when she was treated at a teaching hospital (OR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.06) or at a hospital with two or more available plastic surgeons (OR, 2.01; 95% CI, 1.53 to 2.65). Patients who received IBR traveled significantly farther compared with those who received mastectomy alone (OR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.05 for every 10 km increase)., Conclusion: IBR is available to select patients with favorable clinical and demographic characteristics who travel farther to undergo surgery at teaching hospitals with two or more available plastic surgeons., (© 2014 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.)