Competing Narratives in a Case Biography: A Tale of Two Citadels

This article is the fourth in a series introducing the reader to methods and theories relevant to advancing socio-legal research. They are written for the curious rather than the expert reader and provide illustrations of how the theories, methods, and frameworks have been employed and might be used in your work. This article explores the use of case biography methods for socio-legal studies. Drawing on ‘paths to justice’ studies, network analysis, and legal archaeology, we develop a case study of AC v.Berkshire West Primary Care Trust. We show how the judicial determination of the case suppressed a transgender rights narrative construction of the dispute in favour of one about health care law. Our case biography analysis explores how competing narratives can be traced not only through legal argument and literature, but also through the personnel involved, in ways that are obscured by formal records. Paying attention to biographical features leads to a richer understanding of cases, including the importance of pre- and post-judicial decision-making aspects.     

Factors Associated with Physician Discussion of Health Behaviors with Adolescents

Behaviors developed in adolescence influence health later in life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency of health care provider's discussion of health behaviors with overweight and non-overweight adolescents and identify demographic and health behaviors related to exercise, hours of television viewing, and weight issues associated with these discussions. A Cross sectional survey of urban adolescents was conducted. Trained interviewers administered surveys over a three month period in 2001 at an urban academic pediatric and adolescent clinic. The 252 adolescents surveyed had a mean age of 15 with 49% categorized as being at risk for overweight/overweight and 51% as normal weight using the CDC percentiles for BMI. While 16% of the adolescents reported that their physician or nurse discussed the amount of television they watched, rates of discussion related to exercise (58%), and weight (54%) were much higher. In multivariate analyses, health care provider discussions with adolescents regarding exercise were more common for overweight (O.R.=2.42, 95% C.I. [1.28–4.57]) and at risk for overweight (O.R.=1.98, 95% C.I. [1.03–3.81]) adolescents, whereas physician discussion of television viewing was not associated with weight. Discussions of weight were more common for female (O.R.=2.18, 95% C.I. [1.21–3.95]), African-American (O.R.=2.53, 95% C.I. [1.40–4.57]), and overweight (O.R.=3.92, 95% C.I. [1.97–7.81]) adolescents. Even after adjusting for weight, race and gender strongly influenced the frequency of discussions about weight in physician offices. Although health care providers frequently address weight and exercise with adolescents, more discussions related to sedentary behaviors such as television viewing may be warranted to address adolescent obesity.Received PhD in Epidemiology from University of California, San Diego. Research interests include smoking prevention and cessation among adolescents and health promotion interventions.Received MD from University of Missouri-Kansas City and MPH from Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include health services research and research in support of measurable, systematic improvements in the quality of medical care.Received medical degree from Christian Medical College, Punjab, India and Master of Public Health from University of Kansas School of Medicine. Research interests include diet and physical activity behaviors, role of the environment in obesity and obesity prevention, especially among children and adolescents.Received MBBS from Allama Iqbal Medical College, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan and MPH from University of Kansas Medical Center. Research interests include smoking cessation, database design, implementation, data management and analysis, and use of information technology in health care settings.Director, Cancer Prevention, Control, and Population Sciences, Kansas Cancer Institute. Received MD/MPH from Tulane University and MS from Harvard School of Public Health. Research interests include disparities in healthcare; smoking cessation among underserved populations, specifically African Americans; diet, nutrition, obesity, and physical activity.     

Improvisation and Negotiation: Expecting the Unexpected

Negotiators must improvise. As the negotiations process unfolds, they work with new information, continually making decisions along the way to achieve favorable results. Skilled improvisational jazz musicians and actors perform in similar ways: they repeatedly practice song chord progressions and notes or scene guidelines before a performance; then, during the performance, they work with the information or the music they hear in order to react and respond, making decisions along the way to produce dazzling music or a compelling scene. In this article, two experts in negotiation, a jazz-improvisation scholar, a former member of an improvisational theater troupe, and a psychotherapist versed in therapeutic improvisational techniques explore the improvisational nature of negotiation.
Several aspects of negotiation are similar to improvisation. Both negotiators and improvisational performers need to have a similar mind-set to be successful, both need to recognize and/or change that mind-set at times, and both must craft creative solutions. But there are some significant differences between improvisational performance and negotiation practice, which this article also notes. For example, personal charisma ("star quality") is a common attribute of successful performers, but not something negotiators may always rely on. Similarly, improvisational artists usually work as a team, while a negotiator is often on his or her own. Nonetheless, the incorporation of improvisation techniques into the negotiation skills repertoire holds great promise for practicing negotiators and is a worthy topic of future negotiation research and teaching.     

The Ongoing Reforms to China's Government and State Sector: The case of the energy industry

Though the reforms announced by the Chinese government in the spring of 1998 appear to be substantial and wide ranging, by themselves they may have little impact either on the effectiveness of government or on the performance of the state industries. Two outstanding problems are the structure and allocation of responsibilities within the government, and the excessive power of the state companies. The tasks of regulation and policy formulation in the energy sector should be clearly allocated in a simple administrative structure which specifically excludes any role for the state companies. The present structure of the state-owned energy industries is such that these companies have a great deal of power, not only in the market but also with respect to the government.     

Between Marxism and Nationalism: Chinese historiography and the Soviet influence, 1949-1963

The Chinese practice of Marxist historical writing represents a dynamic interaction between nationalism and transnationalism. On the one hand, Chinese Marxists were attracted to the Soviet experience in applying Marxism to historical study, especially during the 1950s and the early 1960s, for the latter provided a seemingly much needed theoretical guidance. On the other hand, they attempted to circumscribe the Soviet influence in order to strike a balance between history and theory, the foreign and the indigenous, and the national and the transnational. In so doing, they turned their practice of Marxism into an interpretive, hermeneutic process, in which the temporal distance between the Marxist text and China's historical experience became recognized.     

Measuring performance at the army research laboratory: The performance evaluation construct

The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is the only R&D organization to be designated a Pilot Project for Performance Measurement under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). As such, managers at ARL were required to develop a system for measuring progress towards meeting strategic and annual performance goals, as specified in the required planning documents. The measurement system developed at ARL to comply with the GPRA, which we call the Performance Evaluation Construct, is presented herein.