Drawing on insights from linguistics, multimodality and media studies, this book explores the ideological dimensions of media representation and its function in discursively constructing public understandings of, and attitudes toward, civil disorder.
The meanings of disease have undergone such drastic changes with the introduction of modern Western medicine into China during the last two hundred years that new discourses have been invented to theorize illness, redefine health, and reconstruct classes and genders. As a consequence, medical literature is rewritten with histories of hygiene, studies of psychopathology, and stories of cancer, disabilities and pandemics. This edited volume includes studies of discourses about both bodily and psychiatric illness in modern China, bringing together ground-breaking scholarships that reconfigure the fields of history, literature, film, psychology, anthropology, and gender studies by tracing the pathological path of the “Sick Man of East Asia” through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into the new millennium.
Based on the author's in-depth research with children diagnosed with behavioural difficulties, this book provides a thorough critique of today's practices, examining: the traditional analyses of behavioural disorders and the making of disorderly children the influence of the 'expert knowledge' on behavioural disorders and its influence on schools, communities and new generations of teachers the effect of discourses of mental disorder on children and young people the increasing medicalisation of young children with drugs such as Ritalin. This book offers an innovative and accessible analysis of a critical issue facing schools and society today, using Foucaultian notions to pose critical questions of the practices that make children disorderly. Rich in case studies and interviews with children and young people, it will make fascinating reading for students, academics and researchers working in the field of education, inclusion, educational psychology, sociology and youth studies.
Critically drawing on recent theorizations of post-structuralism, feminism, critical criminology, subaltern studies, and post-coloniality he examines the mechanisms through which colonized subjects become recognized, contained, and represented as subordinate.
An original and timely study of men's experiences of depression in which the author tackles the discursively constructed relationship between the self and depression showing its linguistic and social complexity and analyses the relationship between depression and masculinity.
In times of crisis, how do people conceptualise and communicate their experiences through different forms and channels? How can original research in cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis and crisis studies advance our understanding of the ways in which we interact with and communicate about crisis events? In answering these questions, this volume examines the unique functions, features and applications of the metaphors and frames that emerge from and give shape to crisis-related discourses. The chapters in this volume present original concepts, approaches, authentic data and findings of crisis discourses in a wide range of organisational, political and personal contexts that affect a diverse body of language users and communities. This book will appeal to a broad readership in linguistics, sociological studies, cognitive sciences, crisis studies as well as language and communication researchers and practitioners.
This book offers a critical perspective of the dominant discourses within the field of psychological trauma. It provides a challenge to normative western constructs and unsettles assumptions about accepted notions of universality and the nature of trauma. Traditionally the concept of psychological trauma has been widely accepted within mental health professions. However, in a post-positivist era, the language of mental health is shifting and making room for alternative discourses that include wider contextual influences, such as the impact of sociological, cultural, and technological developments. These wider discourses are illuminated as the authors draw together some of these arguments into one accessible text. Rather than claim definitive answers to the issues raised, readers are invited to engage with the discussions presented in order to position themselves in relation to the range of trauma discourses available.
The end of the Cold War created an opportunity for the United Nations to reconceptualize the rationale and extent of its peacebuilding efforts, and in the 1990s, democracy and good governance became legitimizing concepts for an expansion of UN activities. The United Nations sought not only to democratize disorderly states but also to take responsibility for protecting people around the world from a range of dangers, including poverty, disease, natural disasters, and gross violations of human rights. National sovereignty came to be considered less an entitlement enforced by international law than a privilege based on states’ satisfactory performance of their perceived obligations. In Governing Disorder, Laura Zanotti combines her firsthand experience of UN peacebuilding operations with the insights of Michel Foucault to examine the genealogy of post–Cold War discourses promoting international security. Zanotti also maps the changes in legitimizing principles for intervention, explores the specific techniques of governance deployed in UN operations, and identifies the forms of resistance these operations encounter from local populations and the (often unintended) political consequences they produce. Case studies of UN interventions in Haiti and Croatia allow her to highlight the dynamics at play in the interactions between local societies and international peacekeepers.
Framing ADHD Children explores the three social worlds of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: the home, classroom, and clinic. Through intensive interviews with teachers, parents, clinicians, and ADHD children, this book brings to light the human experiences surrounding this behavior disorder. The experiences of interview participants are supplemented with the most detailed historical discussion of ADHD to date, including the past and present debates about the true 'nature' of the disorder, issues concerning children taking stimulant medications, and the continuing discussion of whether or not modern technology can really detect ADHD in the brain. Both the history of ADHD and the people interviewed here demonstrate that ADHD is far from a cut-and-dry phenomenon, but rather a complex social process that requires the negotiation of uncertainty and ambiguity at every step.
The basic theme of this volume is excellent. Readers are treated to fascinating explorations of communication at the boundaries between discourses and selves. The essays address important theoretical issues, and do so often by treating significant social issues. Most welcome is the constructive tone that is for the most part maintained throughout the volume, demonstrating an effort to understand, engage, and critically assess different discourses and selves (and others) at once, without valorizing one over the other. An essential theme running through this volume is the idea that our efforts to engage, as well as other's efforts to engage us, have been seriously impaired because of problems which are fundamentally communicative in nature. More specifically, there is general agreement among the contributors that the voice of other has not been sufficiently heard, and this on account of how discourses of the human sciences, as well as other dominant discourses (e.g. law) have structured our interaction with other. Each of the essays helps to clarify the nature of the communicative failing and to develop an appropriate corrective action.