Search results

This study examines the additive and interactive impact of four dimensions of health locus of control (internality, desire for information, powerful others, and chance) on two measures of well‐being (perceived social support and subjective caregiver burden) among 81 mothers of children with disabilities. Narrative accounts and interactive interviews with such mothers are used to interpret and contextualize the quantitative results. Findings clearly support the multidimensionality of health locus of control. Among these mothers, internality is uncorrelated with both of the dimensions of externality often treated as its polar opposite. It is also uncorrelated with desire for information—often used as its indicator. Complex individual, additive and interactive affects on the measures of well‐being were found for dimensions of health locus of control. Desire for information is negatively correlated with subjective burden. Mothers who do not want information about health feel greater burden of care. Internality and chance interact in their relationships to both aspects of well‐being. Mothers who believe that both their own actions and chance affect health outcomes report the highest levels of social support. Where internality is low, the belief in chance increases perceived social support. Conversely, where chance is low, internality increases support. For highly internal mothers, belief in chance serves to reduce perceived subjective burden. Mothers high in chance but low in internality, on the other hand, feel more burdened by their parenting task. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

AbstractSystems sciences address issues that cross‐cut any single discipline and benefit from the synergy of combining several approaches. But interdisciplinary integration can be challenging to achieve in practice. Scientists with different disciplinary backgrounds often have different views on what count as good data, good evidence, a good model, or a good explanation. Accordingly, several scholars have reported on challenges encountered in interdisciplinary settings. This chapter outlines how some of the challenges play out in systems biology where disciplinary ideals and domainspecific practices sometime collide. We focus on tensions arising due to differences in epistemic standards between modellers with a background in physics or systems engineering, on one hand, and experimenters with a background in molecular biology on the other. We propose that part of the problem of interdisciplinary integration can be understood as the result of unfounded "disciplinary imperialism" on both sides, in which standards from one discipline are uncritically applied to new domains without recognition of other valid or complementary perspectives. Addressing and explicating the disciplinary background for the different views can help facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in science and improve science education.

This article explores the daily practices in a Danish cancer laboratory, where researchers use "personal organoids" as new translational models in the development of personalized medicine. Grown from metastatic cancer tissue of life-threateningly ill patients, personal organoids enable patient-specific drug screenings that may directly shape clinical decision-making and individual patient lives. Hereby, laboratory researchers are confronted with the patient as a person urgently dependent on their research results. We follow how the development of these potentially lifesaving personal models are enabled by "avoidance practices," through which researchers actively sever models' connections to the patients as biographical persons. Yet, this separation does not completely disentangle the organoids from the patients. To highlight how alterity and distance can be constitutive of valued social relations, we bring feminist science and technology studies critiques of care into conversation with anthropological accounts of kinship and personhood in South Pacific societies. Our analysis builds on these literatures, unfolding opportunities for laboratory researchers to practice patient personhood through disconnection or an "ethic of avoidance." Our researcher interlocutors care about cancer patients by caring for organoids and thus exceed the dichotomy between person and thing and enact the patients as biological–biographical persons.

Exploring a paradox, Shawn Bingham and Sara Green show how humor has been used both to challenge traditional views of disability and to reinforce negative stereotypes and social inequalities. Seriously Funny ranges from ancient Greek dramas to medieval court jesters to contemporary comedy, from stage performances to the experiences of daily life. Rich with insights into issues of identity and social stratification, it offers an eye-opening perspective on attitudes toward disability across the ages

This volume seeks to answer the call for richer, more diverse understandings of disability through questions about narrative frameworks in disability research.Narrative is a omnipresent meaning-producing communication form in social life that is both cultural and personal