Robots in Healthcare? What Patients Say

In this paper, we analyse patients’ perspectives on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems in healthcare. Based on citizens’ experiences when hospitalised for COVID-19, we explore how the opinions and concerns regarding healthcare automation could not be disassociated from a context of high pressure on the health system and lack of resources, and a political discourse on AI and robotics; a situation intensified by the pandemic. Thus, through the analysis of a set of interviews, a series of issues are identified that revolve around the following: the empirical effects of imagined robots, the vivid experience of citizens with the care crisis, the discomfort of the ineffective, the virtualised care assemblages, the human-based face-to-face relationships, and the automatisation of healthcare tasks. In light of these results, we show the variability in patients’ perspectives on AI and robotic systems and explain it by distinguishing two interpretive repertoires that account for different views and opinions: a well-being repertoire and a responsibility repertoire. Both interpretative repertoires are relevant in order to grasp the complexity of citizens’ approaches to automatisation of healthcare. Attending to both allows us to move beyond the dominant (political) discourse of technology markets as the only way to respond to healthcare challenges. Thus, we can analyse and integrate patients’ perspectives to develop AI and robotic systems in healthcare to serve citizens’ needs and collective well-being.

Strategies and scripts: an investigation of masculine identity and casual sex

This study analyzed men’s lifestyle websites within the Pick-Up Artist (PUA) community. Employing a feminist post-structural framework, this analysis investigates how heterosexual masculinity is constructed online and aims to examine how sexual activity with multiple women is positioned as valuable to men. Four interpretive repertoires emerged: uncovering the natural —mental and physical work were required to access an authentic, natural maleness; militarization — men were rallied to defend male privilege; feminine commodities for building masculinity — women’s bodies were situated as commodities used to demonstrate achievement of masculinity; and pressured pursuit — men were urged to be the directors of sex and to overcome the obstacle of female consent. PUA authors disavowed the importance of women, though sex from women operated as a central requisite for convincingly achieving masculinity. Key tenets of neoliberalism were regularly present, where male readers were urged to decide to improve and cultivate their outward appearance, behaviours, and subjectivity.

Strategies and scripts: an investigation of masculine identity and casual sex

This study analyzed men’s lifestyle websites within the Pick-Up Artist (PUA) community. Employing a feminist post-structural framework, this analysis investigates how heterosexual masculinity is constructed online and aims to examine how sexual activity with multiple women is positioned as valuable to men. Four interpretive repertoires emerged: uncovering the natural —mental and physical work were required to access an authentic, natural maleness; militarization — men were rallied to defend male privilege; feminine commodities for building masculinity — women’s bodies were situated as commodities used to demonstrate achievement of masculinity; and pressured pursuit — men were urged to be the directors of sex and to overcome the obstacle of female consent. PUA authors disavowed the importance of women, though sex from women operated as a central requisite for convincingly achieving masculinity. Key tenets of neoliberalism were regularly present, where male readers were urged to decide to improve and cultivate their outward appearance, behaviours, and subjectivity.

Reparation policies in Colombia: Memory as a Repertoire

Colombia is one of the countries that has opted for a model of restorative justice to repair the victims of the armed conflict. To accomplish this, it has created a series of reparation laws which involve building scenarios to foster a call for remembrance (duty of memory) and in which the truth can be cleared up. The objective of this study is to provide a discourse analysis of how the notion of memory is constructed within the official reparation policies in Colombia. A discourse analysis of Law 975, Law 1408, and Law 1448 was carried out, using the logic of interpretive repertoires. As a result, it was possible to identify four repertoires: Institutional, Archival, Commemorative, and Reparative. The increasing globalization of reparation policies and the use of memory for the purpose of institutionalization that hinders the possibility of interpreting the past in another way, is discussed.

Securing sex: Embattled masculinity and the pressured pursuit of women’s bodies in men’s online sex advice

This article describes findings from a study examining men’s sex advice centered on cultivating masculinity markers by obtaining sex from multiple women. Employing a feminist poststructuralist framework, discourse analysis is used to investigate how casual sex with multiple women is positioned as a crucial requirement in accruing social status and esteem in men’s online Pick-Up Artist (PUA) advice media. Three interpretive repertoires emerged: (a) Embattled Masculinity – defensive and combative themes are invoked to defend male privilege through the concealed pursuit and sexual command of women; (b) Feminine Commodities – women’s bodies are framed as commodities to signify masculinity achievement; and (c) Pressured Pursuit and Consent as Control – men are positioned as authorities in sex, presumed to hold both the responsibility and power to overcome the obstacle of female consent. Obtaining sex from women is the primary objective of PUA advice – an accumulation resource used to bolster an “authentic” masculinity. While securing sex from women is promoted as the main goal, and a fundamental requirement for masculine subjects, references to the value of the women themselves are conspicuously absent or disclaimed.

La construcción social de la homoparentalidad: ámbito académico, medios de comunicación y ámbito profesional-legislativo

<p>This work aims to analyze the discursive strategies from which we are constructing the phenomenon of gay and lesbian parenting in different public scopes , such as: academic, media and law field. We use a qualitative research method, specifically, the discourse analysis as Potter and Wetherell propose concerning interpretive repertoires. Thus, we can see that defensive standardization strategies are favoured against the risk of homophobia and the attacks on the family diversity.</p><p>There is a risk of confusing resources and experiences that could contribute to a richer collective construction of the phenomenon, reflecting its progress on the legislative, social and political field.</p>

The social–psychological and phenomenological constructs of spirituality in the culture of dhikr in Eastern Ethiopia

The paper sets out to offer social-psychological and phenomenological constructs of spirituality in the culture of dhikr in eastern Ethiopia at a micro-ethnography of faith based therapy (FBT). For analytical purpose, the paper draws on hermeneutics. This is the theory and method that places greater emphasis on the way humans deploy linguistic and cultural symbols to represent, organize and frame religion and other complex experiences. The paper focuses on how dhikr producers deploy various interpretive repertoires to construct the psychological, interactional, emotional, behavioural, imaginative and perceptual dimension of spirituality. The paper indicates that the Hararghe Oromo’s dhikr culture is a hermeneutic exercise that involves cognitive and analytical engagement with the exoteric meanings as well as the esoteric meanings of the world. One can thus take dhikr as a socio-cultural site for analysing the nature of hermeneutically conveyed social–psychological constructs of religion and spirituality. The paper offers also the epistemological and conceptual implications of the study.