Critical posthumanism: A double-edged sword for advancing nursing knowledge in planetary health.

In this article, we aimed to evaluate the utility of critical posthumanism for nurses interested in planetary health-a growing area of study that requires a decentering of the human, and environmental justice considerations. We used Chinn and colleagues' method to describe and critically reflect on critical posthumanism, extending the theory analysis method to include a wide range of academic and video sources. We found that critical posthumanism is like a double-edged sword: It provides a lens through which to transcend human-centric approaches to healthcare but is marred by its lack of clarity and inaccessibility. We argue critical posthumanism can be adapted to enhance its potential at the intersection of nursing and planetary health. An analysis of critical posthumanism is followed by a discussion framed by five ways of knowing in nursing, highlighting real-world examples of how critical posthumanism can aid nurses in dealing with planetary health concerns. By exploring the intersections of critical posthumanism with nursing knowledge, we demonstrate how critical posthumanism can enable nurses to comprehend and tackle environmental issues intricately linked to human health.

Self-control of states: bridging social psychology to international relations discourses.

Why do states respond non-coercively in the face of crisis? Existing scholarship within international relations has stagnated in its conclusions regarding understanding this occurrence. This perspective article attempts to bridge the self-control theory of social psychology to provide a more nuanced understanding of why states self-refrain themselves from taking aggressive retaliatory foreign policies in state-to-state crises. It argues the importance of cognitive-affective units, such as encodings, expectancies, beliefs, goals, values, and self-regulatory plans, as the sociological interpretation of why states are committed to pursuing delayed rewards. It builds upon existing sociological theories adopted in international relations scholarship, such as state identities and role conceptions, and further considers the social psychology variables detrimental in self-control theories, and argues for its relevance to decompose the ability of a state to prioritize delayed gratification over immediate awards in tensions faced.

Assessing potential for policy feedback from renewable energy incentive programs.

Climate advocates look optimistically to policy feedback as a mechanism for locking-in a decarbonization policy trajectory, but little research has examined whether and how climate legislation creates constituencies that could provide future political support. This article focuses on incentive programs supporting investment in solar PV and the potential for policy feedback through participating households. We first develop a framework of feedback potential that considers the volume and partisanship of incentive program beneficiaries and their distribution across electoral districts. We then apply the framework to New York State's solar PV incentive program, which enabled over 140,000 households to install solar PV. We find that the number of solar PV incentive beneficiaries is positively associated with Republican vote share, suggesting potential for a strong pro-solar constituency in the pivotal, Republican-led districts. Within electoral districts, however, beneficiaries skew Democratic, raising questions about the direction of policy feedback. The results carry implications for the kind of politics that incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act may set in motion in the coming years.

Suicide Pact: Till Death Do Us Part .

BACKGROUND: Suicide pacts are always tragic though they remain under-identified and under-reported. History and fiction are full of them, though they would only represent less than one percent of all suicides in Occident. A suicide pact is an agreement made between two or more people to commit suicide together and requires a reciprocal consent but also intent, volition and capability. Victims, motivations and operating methods are multiple, and continue to diversify even more with Internet and social media. How can we identify people at risk? SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Between November 2023 and May 2024, a literature search based on electronic bibliographic databases as well as other sources of information (grey literature) was conducted in order to investigate the most recent data on suicide pacts and especially how they evolved with Internet and social media. RESULTS: Different categories of suicide pacts can be made, but the typical template for a prospective suicide pact describes as two withdrawn individuals, in a tight and close relationship, who feel ensnared in a desperate and unmitigable situation. CONCLUSIONS: Prevention can done at various levels, but screening individuals who fit the profile for risk would certainly be a start. To identify a suicide pact, forensics, criminology and sociology need to be considered.

Christianity and reverential naturalism engage a world in peril: A dialogue between disciplines.

Christian theologians and ostensibly secular sociologists of religion rely on different resources to respond to personal, local, or global problems. The environmental crises we see around the world reflect a strict hierarchy between human beings and the natural world. In both the theological and social scientific arenas of the last few decades, however, we see an 'animal turn' that exposes the hubris of anthropocentrism and creates opportunities for new ways of writing and teaching about the natural environment. Using the Pacific Northwest's 'reverential naturalism' as a touchstone, the authors reflect on the extent to which their respective fields prepare secular scholars and theologians to address the crises all animals - including humans - now face. Using a dialogue format, they explore whether theological and social scientific regimes of truth and knowledge are incommensurable. What might this mean for the region and the two fields out of which they authors emerge?

Les théologiens chrétiens et les sociologues des religions apparemment laïcs s'appuient sur différentes ressources pour répondre à des problèmes personnels, locaux ou mondiaux. Les crises environnementales que nous observons dans le monde reflètent une hiérarchie stricte entre les êtres humains et le monde naturel. Cependant, dans les domaines théologique et social des dernières décennies, nous assistons à un « tournant animal ¼ qui expose l'hubris de l'anthropocentrisme et ouvre à de nouvelles manières d'écrire sur et d'enseigner l'environnement naturel. En s'appuyant sur le « naturalisme révérencieux ¼ du nord-ouest du Pacifique comme point de référence, les auteurs réfléchissent à la façon dont leurs domaines respectifs préparent les chercheurs laïcs et les théologiens à affronter les crises auxquelles tous les animaux ­ y compris les humains ­ sont désormais confrontés. Par le biais d'un dialogue, ils se demandent si les régimes de vérité et de connaissance de la théologie et des sciences sociales sont incommensurables. Que cela pourrait-il signifier pour la région et les deux domaines dont les auteurs sont issus ?

Sources and processes of social influence on health-related choices: A systematic review based on a social-interdependent choice paradigm.

BACKGROUND: Most choices in healthcare are not made in social isolation. However, current econometric models treat patients' preferences as the sole determinants of their choices. Through the lens of sociology and medical sociology theories, this paper presents a systematic literature review of identifiable social influences on patients' choices, serving as a first step in developing a social-interdependent choice paradigm. METHODS: Following the PRISMA guideline and using nine databases, we identified the individual agents or groups involved in health-related choices, the functional content through which social relationships influence patients, and the choice constructs affected by these processes. From 9036 screened articles, we selected 208 to develop an analytical framework connecting social relationships with choice constructs. RESULTS: Social influences predominantly come from family, friends, specialized physicians, and general practitioners. We decomposed the functional content of social relationships into functions and contents. Dyadic interactions and expert knowledge were prominent functions, followed by social control. Prescriptive and informational contents were prevalent, followed by instrumental and emotional ones. Expert knowledge and social norms aligned with prescriptive and informational signals, while dyadic interactions provide emotional and instrumental signals. Reference points for social norms included friends, coworkers, and patients. Social relationships primarily impact which alternatives are evaluated, followed by alternative evaluation strategies and goal selection. Distinctions between medical domains and dimensions emerged, highlighting how the medical area conditions the social influence process. CONCLUSION: This systematic review presents a comprehensive framework that elucidates the social influence process in healthcare patient decision-making. By detailing the functional content of social relationships into functions and contents and linking these components to the elements of the choice process, we created a structured approach to understanding how social relationships impact patient choices. This will facilitate the systematic integration of social relationships into econometric models of patient choice.

The PHEM-B toolbox of methods for incorporating the influences on Behaviour into Public Health Economic Models.

BACKGROUND: It is challenging to predict long-term outcomes of interventions without understanding how they work. Health economic models of public health interventions often do not incorporate the many determinants of individual and population behaviours that influence long term effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to draw on psychology, sociology, behavioural economics, complexity science and health economics to: (a) develop a toolbox of methods for incorporating the influences on behaviour into public health economic models (PHEM-B); and (b) set out a research agenda for health economic modellers and behavioural/ social scientists to further advance methods to better inform public health policy decisions. METHODS: A core multidisciplinary group developed a preliminary toolbox from a published review of the literature and tested this conceptually using a case study of a diabetes prevention simulation. The core group was augmented by a much wider group that covered a broader range of multidisciplinary expertise. We used a consensus method to gain agreement of the PHEM-B toolbox. This included a one-day workshop and subsequent reviews of the toolbox. RESULTS: The PHEM-B toolbox sets out 12 methods which can be used in different combinations to incorporate influences on behaviours into public health economic models: collaborations between modellers and behavioural scientists, literature reviewing, application of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology, systems mapping, agent-based modelling, differential equation modelling, social network analysis, geographical information systems, discrete event simulation, theory-informed statistical and econometric analyses, expert elicitation, and qualitative research/process tracing. For each method, we provide a description with key references, an expert consensus on the circumstances when they could be used, and the resources required. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first attempt to rigorously and coherently propose methods to incorporate the influences on behaviour into health economic models of public health interventions. It may not always be feasible or necessary to model the influences on behaviour explicitly, but it is essential to develop an understanding of the key influences. Changing behaviour and maintaining that behaviour change could have different influences; thus, there could be benefits in modelling these separately. Future research is needed to develop, collaboratively with behavioural scientists, a suite of more robust health economic models of health-related behaviours, reported transparently, including coding, which would allow model reuse and adaptation.

"Backlash!"? A qualitative exploration of hospice palliative care staff's ongoing experiences of "living with covid".

Background: "Living with covid" has meant that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has become a background concern for many in the United Kingdom. However, people with terminal conditions remain some of those at higher risk of Covid-19 affecting the quality-of-life left, as well as the amount of life. Little is known about how staff manage the ongoing risks and challenges-to themselves and those they seek to support-when providing palliative care in the context of an airborne transmissible virus. Objective: To explore the experiences of UK hospice staff of "living with covid" to identify how Covid-19 continues to affect their work and well-being. Design: An interpretivist qualitative interview study. Methods: Reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured online interviews with 12 staff recruited from three hospices in the West Midlands, UK. Results: We explored how participants' accounts of "living with covid" included several ambivalences: Participants not only sought to assert the importance of not forgetting that time but also wished to "move-on." This included moving Covid-19 to the "background" through embedding systemic adaptions and lessons learnt, while also recognizing that they had to address issues relating to Covid-19 "case-by-case." Finally, participants' wish to move-on and a mostly reactive approach to mitigations meant that they were unable to meaningfully reconcile how asymptomatic transmission promotes patients' quality-of-life left. Conclusion: Recollections of the difficulties of the Covid-19 public health emergency were part of a "backlash" to any future consideration of mitigations for airborne transmissible viruses and helped justify a "living with (getting) covid" approach. However, this also created uncertainty of how best to support patients who are vulnerable to having the quality and amount of life left compromised by viral infection. The pandemic has brought renewed impetus to re-examine hospice palliative care's ideals and practices in the context of airborne transmissible viruses.

It's never simple! People, power and relationships in the United Kingdom Olympic sport policy system. A commentary.

Drawing on insights from the United Kingdom [UK], this commentary highlights the complexity of the Olympic sport policy process and proposes a novel conceptual approach that situates people at the forefront of the analysis. Informed by process sociology, the approach demonstrates the importance of understanding complexity as the consequence of interdependent relationships that bind people together. Extracts from interviews undertaken with nine senior National Governing Body employees, who are responsible for implementing Olympic sport policy, are drawn on to inform and illuminate the proposed approach. Their extracts showcase that conversations and dialogue, often undertaken in the context of meetings, are central to the policy process. Managing emotions, navigating opacity, deep personal involvement and associated personal wellbeing impacts are all features of the Olympic sport policy process not readily accounted for in the extant literature or practice. The process, increasingly games like, never wholly represents the actions of any one group or individual as they navigate choices constrained by the interlacing of many relationships over time. We therefore conclude that it may be conceptually better to now describe the organisation of Olympic sport in the UK as a figuration of people rather than as a "system".

The de-structuration of eating models in East Asia under compressed food modernity: An empirical synthesis.

The de-structuration of eating models refers to a multitude of contemporary dietary changes, such as meal skipping and eating out, that diverge from 'proper' eating models in given societies. This phenomenon has been studied primarily in Western societies and diagnosed as a more modest change than previously assumed by alarming social discourse. However, this view must be relativised from non-Western perspectives. De-structuration involves the weakening of dietary normative systems and the increased food anxiety, the typical symptoms of reflexive modernity. This concept is theoretically based on the paradigm of 'plural' modernities, but it has been scarcely tested empirically in non-Western regions. Web-based questionnaire surveys were conducted from 2021 to 2024 in four East Asian societies that have experienced compressed modernisation. The two studies in Japan (n = 973) and Taiwan (n = 920) have already been reported elsewhere. In this article, discussion on this Japan-Taiwan comparison is further extended with new datasets in South Korea (n = 1039) and China (n = 1035), providing an empirical synthesis of eating models and their de-structuration in four East Asian societies. In contrast to Western societies, de-structuration in East Asia has been more intense than a modest change. Similarly, in Taiwan and South Korea, the degree of change has been so large that de-structuration has extended to dietary norms. In Japan, the norm-practice discrepancy has been intensified by the country's gendered dietary norms. Finally, in China, there has been a time lag between dietary changes and the drastic socioeconomic reforms since the 1980s, manifesting an embryonic form of de-structuration. These phenomena are diverse aspects of compressed food modernity, and our article contributes by providing empirical support for plural views of food modernisation.

Adolescent dysmenorrhoea in general practice: tensions and uncertainties.

This Perspectives article reflects on findings from our systematic review about adolescent dysmenorrhoea Q, drawing on sociology of diagnosis theory. We consider tensions and uncertainties between presentation with symptoms of dysmenorrhoea and processes of symptom categorisation and diagnosis in adolescents, tracing these through research and clinical guidance, considering possible implications for clinical practice. We argue that challenges in distinguishing between primary and secondary dysmenorrhoea in research translate into challenges in differentiation in clinical practice. We argue that framing this distinction as clear cut and straightforward belies the well-documented challenges in diagnosis of endometriosis, and that not recognising uncertainty and complexity inherent in this task may benefit neither clinicians nor patients.

Treatment 'cultures', sexually transmitted infections and the rise of antimicrobial resistance.

In this article, we examine the current management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), in the context of rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR), through the lens of 'treatment cultures'. Prevailing treatment cultures-including the prominence of syndromic care for STIs-foster certain possibilities and foreclose others, with important consequences for countering AMR. Drawing on qualitative interviews with STI professionals, experts and industry representatives, we unpack these stakeholders' accounts of STI treatment cultures, drawing out the importance of socio-historical (i.e. taboo and stigma), political-economic (i.e. perceptions of significance, profit-making and prioritisation) and subjective (i.e. patient contexts and reflexivity) dimensions therein. In developing this critical account of how treatment cultures are formed, reproduced and indeed resisted, we reveal how such discourses and practices render the reining in of AMR and shifting antibiotic use difficult, and yet, how productive engagement remains key to any proposed solutions. As such, the article contributes to our understanding of AMR as a highly diversified field, through our exploration of the bio-social dimensions of resistance as they relate to the case of STIs.

Non-binary narratives: subjectivation and lived experiences in contemporary Italy.

This paper explores the processes of individual and collective subjectivation experienced by non-binary individuals living in contemporary Italy. Using qualitative methods, the study, which was conducted between July and September 2021, involved a sample of twenty-six young adults aged between eighteen and thirty years. Starting from participants' narratives, the thematic analysis revealed the significance of both physical and virtual support environments in the subjectivation process, taking into account the diverse micro-contexts in which people live. The study's findings underscore the continued need to challenge societal norms and structures that perpetuate discrimination against people who reject exclusive identification with the male or female gender and opt for more fluid and non-traditional definitions of gender identity.

"Social science is explanation or it is nothing." Introduction to a debate.

This essay introduces contributions to a special section, which documents and extends a debate on the proposition "Social Science is Explanation or it is Nothing" held at the London School of Economics on October 13th, 2022. It discusses the history of the "Group for Theoretical Debates in Anthropology" led by Tim Ingold, Peter Wade and Soumhya Venkatesan, which has handed down a list of credible candidates for issues that had a chance of engaging every anthropologist, including students and those with interdisciplinary interests. It raises questions about the specific affordances of debates as forms of academic engagements. It argues that the chosen proposition concerning explanation invites a discussion about the contributions of the social sciences at a time when impulses from science and technology studies as well as fruitful exchanges across the boundary between "theory" and "method" have helped us moved beyond the older question as to whether or not sociology is "a science".

An epistemology of empathy and modern methods of social research: Intimations of the mind and early Chicago sociology.

Empathic qualitative methods have become emblematic of early Chicago sociology. Yet methods were not formalized through the early 20th century and empathy was not in usage as a term. Only at mid-20th century did methodological formalization in sociology begin to occur, and an additional quarter-century passed before writing about empathy in sociological methods began to crystallize. Nevertheless, a portion of early Chicago sociologists, assimilating pragmatist thought, established a framework for the deployment of empathic acumen. Because empathy involves understanding others, it is argued that it is central to the study of social life. The article contends that understanding empathy must be as central to the social scientist's knowledge as it is to the effective deployment of research methods: a competent quest to generate knowledge about social life is premised on empathy. To heighten awareness of empathy, an epistemology is necessary. To this end, the article examines empathy as situated by a set of organizational and historical conditions that account for its origin and ascendance as a prescriptive characteristic of sociological work. The author draws attention to the significance of suffering and suggests that its religious precepts are transmuted for the conditions under which sociology develops in turn-of-the-century Chicago.

Carbon Accounting in the Digital Industry: The Need to Move towards Decision Making in Uncertainty.

In this paper, we present findings from a qualitative interview study, which highlights the difficulties and challenges with quantifying carbon emissions and discusses how to move productively through these challenges by drawing insights from studies of deep uncertainty. Our research study focuses on the digital sector and was governed by the following research question: how do practitioners researching, working, or immersed in the broad area of sustainable digitisation (researchers, industry, NGOs, and policy representatives) understand and engage with quantifying carbon? Our findings show how stakeholders struggled to measure carbon emissions across complex systems, the lack of standardisation to assist with this, and how these challenges led stakeholders to call for more data to address this uncertainty. We argue that these calls for more data obscure the fact that there will always be uncertainty, and that we must learn to govern from within it.

Toward a Sociology of Plasma Products.

Over the past 20 years, plasma has become a medical treatment characterized as "liquid gold" to signal its lifesaving potential. Through a manufacturing process termed fractionation, plasma, collected through blood donation, is turned into Plasma Derived Medical Products (PDMPs). The World Health Organization (WHO) has underlined the importance of PDMPs for global health care, including a number of PDMPs on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. The process of collecting plasma from a donor, manufacturing plasma derived treatments, and distributing those treatments globally requires the coordination of multiple social actors operating in different social, political and economic contexts, but has received little attention in scholarly literature on public policy or the social sciences. This paper will introduce a set of analytic questions and concepts that can direct a sociology of plasma products. We build on the behavioral turn in the policy sciences to identify relevant policy questions emerging from this field and offer the analytic tools necessary to investigate how different social actors in this space make meaning of plasma. To do this, we will draw on key concepts in the sociology of health and illness.

Disputes over the figures of the COVID-19 pandemic: Epistemic diversity, dissemination of science, and political opposition.

The health policies imposed by multiple national governments after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 were publicly justified by official figures on the deaths that the new virus would have caused and could cause in the future. At the same time, however, groups of people from different countries expressed their scepticism about those figures. Although they were categorised as 'anti-science', 'spreaders of misinformation' or 'conspiracy theorists' in some media, many of those sceptics claimed to be based on scientific evidence. This article qualitatively analyses a sample of the content published by sceptics on their social media between 2020 and 2022. More specifically, it examines the shared documents supposedly coming from the scientific community. We find very diverse content ranging from unsubstantiated assumptions to documents produced by prestigious scientists inviting questions about the fatality rates, the mathematical models anticipating millions of deaths, and the real numbers of people who died from COVID-19. The disputes surrounding the official figures lead us to a reflection about the relationship between, epistemic diversity, the dissemination of science, censorship, and new forms of political opposition. We also touch upon the nature and ethics of scientific controversy in times of a 'war' against 'misinformation'.

Digital Inclusion among Community Older Adults in the Republic of Korea: Measuring Digital Skills and Health Consequences.

Many older adults are increasingly embracing digital technology in the Republic of Korea. This study investigated the relationship between the digital skills of Korean older adults and their perceived health status and digital technology application for health promotion. This mixed-method study comprised a community survey of 434 older adults aged ≥65 in two cities in South Korea, followed by focus group interviews. Five types of digital skills, 'operational internet skills', 'information navigation skills', 'social skills', 'creative skills', and 'mobile skills', were measured using the LSE digital skill measurement instrument. Multivariable analysis identified the influence of digital skills on health-related outcomes. Among them, 'social skills' associated positively with self-rated health (ß 0.37, 95%CI 0.08, 0.65). 'Information navigation skills' contributed positively to the use of digital technology and the internet for a healthy lifestyle in terms of improving eating habits (ß 0.43, 95%CI 0.09, 0.77), accessing healthcare (ß 0.53, 95%CI 0.21, 0.85), and accessing long-term care services (ß 0.45, 95%CI 0.11, 0.79). Thematic analysis revealed that the study participants use Korean language-based resources such as Naver and Kakao Talk for social connection to promote a healthy lifestyle. This study concludes that encouraging initial and sustained use of the internet and enhancing digital skills among Korean older adults can promote active and healthy aging.