Category Archives: research

new digital story

Leave a reply


Really enjoyed workshop at Swansea Uni which encouraged us to try and explain some of our research using a digital story format. Workshop run by Prue Thimbleby, and we were a fairly diverse bunch, from experts in big data, to physicists, to people working with algae or in social care. Though I’m quite new to my present field, health literacy, I tried to present my personal journey into the field at present, using some personal stories. These will be shown at the Swansea University Festival of Research later on this month.

Digital storytelling has been on my horizon for a while, and there’s a lively community of people involved. Capture Wales, Storyworks and the work of Daniel Meadows, Gareth Morlais and others are all worth having a look at. I’m currently also trying to get through the massive global #ETMOOC which Gareth pointed me to yesterday, lots of inspirational ideas.

ymchwil newydd, llythrennedd iechyd

Leave a reply

Newydd ddechrau ym mhrifysgol Abertawe, mewn maes newydd i fi sef llythrennedd iechyd, ac fyddai’n edrych ar rhwydweithiau cymdeithasol pobol hyn (defnyddio’r Convoy Model), yn enwedig rhai sydd yn byw gyda unai iselder neu diabetes – ond y prif nod yw gweld beth yw eu llythrennedd iechyd, gan ystyried fod hwn yn rhywbeth cyhyrchiol, sy’n newid dros fywyd. Gweithio gyda Dr Michelle Edwards ar hyn.

Gwaith ansoddol fydd hwn, ac mae’n dod ar ben prosiect hirdymor mawr sydd wedi bod yn mynd ers tua 1991, sef CFAS: mae dipyn o’r gwaith yma wedi wneud eisioes o Brifysgol Bangor, a fyddai’n rhan o dîm ehangach. Wedi dweud hyn, mae’r methdoleg i’r prif astudiaeth yn fwy meintiol, gyda’r tîm ymchwilwyr yn mynd allan i holi sampl ar hap o bobl dros 65, ond drwy defnyddio holiadur penodol, weddol hir. Mae’r prosiect yma wedi creu dros 200 o bapurau pwysig yn y maes. O be dwi’n ddallt, llawer o’r ffeithiau am dementia ac Alzheimers yn deillio o’r astudiaeth bwysig yma bellach, ac mae nhw’n gweithio’n agos gyda Cymdeithas Alzheimers, er enghraifft.

Bydd ein gwaith ni yn fwy agored, mwy o sgwrs na’r holiadur yma. Yn y broses o ddarllenb mwy am  cfendir, onbd cyn mynd am y gwaith, ges i foment clir oedd yn cysylltu pethau i fi yn bersonol, trwy fy ngwaith gyda Inroads neu S4C Cymorth, neu gwaith ymchwil yn y gorffenol sydd wedi edrych ar anghenion iechyd, neu gwasanaethau cyffuriau ac alcohol. Nes i sylwi, am y tro cyntaf bron iawn, mai wrth wraidd lot o be dwi’n wneud mae syniadau yn ymwneud â hybu iechyd yn yr ystyr a ddaw o ddogfennau pwysig (chwyldroadol…?) fel yr Ottawa Charter.

 

Illness as Metaphor – Susan Sontag

Leave a reply

Worth quoting the preface in full, as it elegantly gives you a feeling for the rest of this often quoted book:

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

I want to describe, not what it is really like to emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and live there, but the punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted about the situation: not real geography, but stereotypes of national character. My subject is not physical illness itself but the uses of illness itself as a figure or metaphor. My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness – and the healthiest way of being ill – is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped. It is toward an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry.

Musing on this, Sontag skillfully lays bare a lot of the ways in which we deceive ourselves, and how society creates other fictions around two principal illnesses: TB and cancer. She traces back the and contrasts the Romantic obsession with TB especially. There’s a clarity to this essay: she debunks some of the ways we think about illness, especially cancer; how e canalzily attribute moral or emotional categories to the illness, which in reality might have nothing to do with how it has come about e.g. someone might develop cancer because they’ve been ‘repressed’ emotionally.

However, interesting critique of the essay to be found here, which poses the question that perhaps Sontag should have been kinder in looking at metaphor a way of making meaning in life; however erroneous, it is a part of how we sometimes use narratives to make sense of things. I’ve seen enough serious illness, including cancer, to be convinced that the stories that we tell ourselves can be a source of both comfort and despair, that narrative identity is important. The opening lines of the essay themselves are a masterclass in metaphor, which was probably her point.

 

 

logic of care

Leave a reply

Really interesting book, both generally and for the research about ‘health and the problem of patient choice’, though the examples used are in a completely different field. Links into the whole set of ‘choices’ which are being presented as the only (neo-liberal) way. Subtle differences here (so far) between Wales and over the border, where the ‘choice’ agenda seems stronger, and will inevitably be played out post election. In essence, Mol argues that good care has little to do with ‘patient choice’ and so promoting patient choice will not improve health care. Indeed, such thinking undermines ways of thinking and acting crucial to health care. Uses examples from diabetes clinics and diabetes self care, the ‘logic of care’ in a is contrasted with the ‘logic of choice’. ‘Good care is not a matter of making well argued individual choices but is something that grows out of collaborative and continuing attempts to attune knowledge and technologies to diseased bodies and complex lives’.

This can also be linked to ideas of  ‘empowerment’ – is that a consumerist or liberational model? how does it link to ideas such as peer mentoring or ‘service user involvement’? Also might link to ideas of ‘technologies of citizenship’.

 

animators

Leave a reply

Interesting interview yesterday with Dinamo, who commission a lot of the music they use because of the nature of what they produce. Again, as content producers in the modern sense, they have full rights to exploit this (….previously, for example, productions for S4C would mean all rights signed over to S4C). This means they’re more interested in buy-outs of music, especially if, with say a popular children’s animation, they can sell it to the rest of the world. They very much ‘buy local’ however, hardly ever use production music – but they were interested in the concept of being able to go and open out the commissioning process, even just for 30 second stings – if there was one place where this could happen (music producers and those wishing to commission getting together) then they would be interested.

Various production companies in Wales have taken the changes in ‘content rights’ on board, some having formed their own publishing arms, to exploit all rights.

snowballs

Leave a reply

Preparing for the trip to North Wales, and there’s a good snowball effect happening as I speak to people and they suggest others we should speak to. So far, we’ve got Rondo, Cwmni Da and Barcud covered hopefully, and I’ve expanded who we’re talking to a bit – dubbing mixers seem to have quite an effect on music choice also, for example.

Most things are going up in the calendar. Also, just to clarify, we’ll be keeping things nice and anonymous in general, for the internal research report also, and we’ll be asking people whether they want names used, as standard practice.

Notice that there’s both a project calendar and question framework (which people can feel free to comment about /add to) on the right. I’d stress that the framework questions are are only intended as a loose guide to the areas we want to explore and we encourage tangents into relevant areas.

Perceptions of poverty and the media

Leave a reply

Just finished writing up as rapporteur for the recent JRF/Bevan Foundation conference at the Atrium in Cardiff (first visit, nice building ), relevant links can be found in this document. Really got me thinking in terms of how we frame our ‘media culture’ these days, that ‘traditional’ broadcasters are disguising depictions of poverty in other formats e.g. The Secret Millionaire, and it’s tragic in some ways that the debate is being conducted in theses terms. The whiff of deserving and undeserving poor, philanthropy as the desired model etc.

However, there’s also some hope: ‘ media’ is now far more ubiquitous, a process which will probably only accelerate, and there’s far more scope now for people to tell their stories using the technology they have to hand, whether that’s through the digital storytelling movement, or third sector organisations finally beginning to get to grips with using this tehnology for case studies etc. Reminds me again of Illich for some reason.

 

 

 

Broadband literature review

Leave a reply

Just finished this document for the Bevan Foundation, not sure whether or not it might be a bit academic, but the brief wasn’t very clear, and the funding was actually from BT. Really enjoyed looking at the issues though, and they seem to tie up with quite a few other interests around poverty and technology, and also the stuff ablut Illich which seems to have stuck with me form Finn’s lectures.

making social science matter – bent flyvbjerg

Leave a reply

Very excited about this book, which was suggested on my Research Design in Practice course, and which seems to have further fuelled the whole debate about the usefulness of social science. For the first time, I’ve been able to sit down and read (and understand….) such a debate from cover to cover, and I’m trying to digest it all. I’ve a feeling it’s going to take a while.

It’s main argument boils down to Flyvbjerg’s insistence that:

social science never has been, and probably never will be, able to develop the type of explanatory and predictive theory that is the ideal and hallmark of natural science

and that frankly, the sooner that people get over this the better. He then goes on to look at how context and judgement are the most important things to look at when considering human action – is a theory based on context and judgement and action possible? bHe thinks not, and so social theory and social science methodology need to be changed accordingly.

His answer lies partly in the Aristotlean concept of phronesis.

Other methodological consideration from Flyvbjerg:

  • Phronetic research focuses on values: where are we going? Is it desirable? What should be done? Contextalism or situational ethics – that means realising that the firmest foundations are those rooted in sociality and history.
  • Power – set out as being productive and positive, not just restrictive and negative, a dense net of omnipresent relations not only as localised “centres”  and institutions, or as an entity we can possess . Power is ultradynamic, not something which one appropriates, but also reappropriates, constant back and forth in relation to strenth, tactics, strategies
  • Knowledge and power, truth and power and rationality and power are analytically inseperable – power produces knowledge and knowledge produces power.
  • Central question is around HOW power is exercised, not just WHO has it
  • Power should be studied bly looking at the small interactions, not just the big questions

Flyvjerg p.132 ” in contemporary studies one gets close to the phenomenon or group whom one studies during data collection and remains close during the phases of data analysis, feedback and publication of results….this strategy typically  creates interest by outside parties, even outside stakeholders, in the research. These parties will test and evalutae the research in various ways. The researchers will consciously expose themselves to reactions from their surroundings – positive and negative-’ derive benefit form the learning effect…..researcher becomes part of the phenomenon, without ‘going native’….”