Women and human development: the capabilities approach

Women and Human Development. Martha C. Nussbaum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 303 pp.

Women and Human Development.

Popular media present a vast array of stories about women and men. What impact do these images and ideas have on people’s identities?
The new edition of Media, Gender and Identity is a highly readable introduction to the relationship between media and gender identities today. Fully revised and updated, including new case studies and a new chapter, it considers a wide range of research and provides new ways for thinking about the media’s influence on gender and sexuality.
David Gauntlett discusses movies such as Knocked Up and Spiderman 3, men’s and women’s magazines, TV shows, self-help books, YouTube videos, and more, to show how the media play a role in the shaping of individual self-identities.
The book includes:

a comparison of gender representations in the past and today, from James Bond to Ugly Betty
an introduction to key theorists such as Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault 
an outline of creative approaches, where identities are explored with video, drawing, or Lego bricks
a Companion Website with extra articles, interviews and selected links, at: www.theoryhead.com.

Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction

Despite considerable progress in recent geographic information systems (GIS) research (especially on public-participation GIS), the critical discourse on GIS in the 1990s does not seem to have affected GIS practices in geographic research in significant ways. Development in critical GIS practice has been quite limited to date, and GIS and critical geographies remain two separate, if not overtly antagonistic, worlds. This suggests that critical engagement that seeks to conceive and materialize the critical potential of GIS for geographic research is still sorely needed. In this article, I explore the possibilities for this kind of critical engagement through revisiting some of the central arguments in the critical discourse from feminist perspectives. I examine whether GIS methods are inherently incompatible with feminist epistemologies through interrogating their connection with positivist scientific practices and visualization technologies. Bearing in mind the limitations of current GIS, I explore severa...

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Feminist Visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research

Importance US life expectancy has not kept pace with that of other wealthy countries and is now decreasing. Objective To examine vital statistics and review the history of changes in US life expectancy and increasing mortality rates; and to identify potential contributing factors, drawing insights from current literature and an analysis of state-level trends. Evidence Life expectancy data for 1959-2016 and cause-specific mortality rates for 1999-2017 were obtained from the US Mortality Database and CDC WONDER, respectively. The analysis focused on midlife deaths (ages 25-64 years), stratified by sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geography (including the 50 states). Published research from January 1990 through August 2019 that examined relevant mortality trends and potential contributory factors was examined. Findings Between 1959 and 2016, US life expectancy increased from 69.9 years to 78.9 years but declined for 3 consecutive years after 2014. The recent decrease in US life expectancy culminated a period of increasing cause-specific mortality among adults aged 25 to 64 years that began in the 1990s, ultimately producing an increase in all-cause mortality that began in 2010. During 2010-2017, midlife all-cause mortality rates increased from 328.5 deaths/100 000 to 348.2 deaths/100 000. By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases. The largest relative increases in midlife mortality rates occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%) and the Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%). The increase in midlife mortality during 2010-2017 was associated with an estimated 33 307 excess US deaths, 32.8% of which occurred in 4 Ohio Valley states. Conclusions and Relevance US life expectancy increased for most of the past 60 years, but the rate of increase slowed over time and life expectancy decreased after 2014. A major contributor has been an increase in mortality from specific causes (eg, drug overdoses, suicides, organ system diseases) among young and middle-aged adults of all racial groups, with an onset as early as the 1990s and with the largest relative increases occurring in the Ohio Valley and New England. The implications for public health and the economy are substantial, making it vital to understand the underlying causes.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2756187/jama_woolf_2019_sc_190006.pdf

Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the United States, 1959-2017

Place-focused physical activity research, human agency, and social justice in public health: taking agency seriously in studies of the built environment.

March-April 2012 The idea that ordinary people should have an opportunity to participate in important policy matters is as old as democracy itself. Today, this idea prevails in contemporary democratic theory and has made significant inroads in public policy. Deliberations to address social challenges in health, science, education, and the environment are proliferating around the globe. Deliberative processes have been used, for example, to strengthen local government and civil society in Bolivia; promote growth and sustainability in Perth, Australia; and advise health ministries in Canada on new health technologies. Yet despite the widespread appeal of and volumes of ink devoted to this idea, there is no settled account of what constitutes public deliberation in theory or in practice. Deliberative processes go by a variety of names (deliberative democracy, deliberative politics, participatory governance) and take diverse forms (citizen juries, national issue forums, deliberative opinion polls, participatory budgeting). The purposes, processes, and products of deliberation are all subject to debate. Here we propose Essays

What is public deliberation

For over two decades, the “deliberative turn” has rooted itself in the fields of health policy and bioethics, producing a growing body of deliberation in action and associated academic scholarship. With this growing use and study of citizen deliberation processes in the health sector, we set out to map this dynamic field to highlight its diversity, interdisciplinarity, stated and implicit goals and early contributions. More specifically, we explored how public deliberation (PD) is being experimented with in real-world health settings, with a view to assessing how well it is meeting current definitions and common features of PD. Our review provides an informative and up-to-date set of reflections on the relatively short but rich history of public deliberation in the health sector. This emerging, interdisciplinary field is characterized by an active community of scholars and practitioners working diligently to address a range of bioethics and health policy challenges, guided by a common but loosely interpreted set of core features. Current definitions and conceptualizations of public deliberation’s core features would benefit from expansion and refinement to both guide and respond to practice developments. Opportunities for more frequent cross-disciplinary and theory-practice exchange would also strengthen this field.

https://delibdemjournal.org/article/429/galley/4643/download/

Public Deliberation in Health Policy and Bioethics: Mapping an emerging, interdisciplinary field

The completion of the Human Genome Project occurred at a time of increasing public attention to health disparities. In 2004, Sankar and colleagues1 suggested that this coincidental timing resulted in an inappropriate emphasis on the contribution of genomics to health disparities, conflating racial patterns of disease with genetic ancestry, and distracting attention from the large and compelling body of scientific evidence pointing to social determinants of health disparities.2 For example, genomic research has emphasized discovery of genetic contributors to diabetes risk, but the recent increase in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, which disproportionately affects minority populations, cannot be attributed to genetic changes and rather reflects social forces affecting diet, food access, and patterns in physical activity. The introduction of new genomic health technologies could also exacerbate disparities in access to high-quality health care, if specific genomic testing improved health and was only available to those who were affluent. Nonetheless, the claim persists that genomic research can reduce health disparities—if only participation by minority populations in genomic research could be increased.

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Genomics, Health Disparities, and Missed Opportunities for the Nation's Research Agenda.

Persons of low socioeconomic status generallyexperience worse health and shorter lives thantheir better off counterparts They alsosuffer a greater incidence of adversepsychosocial characteristics, such as lowself-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-masteryand increased cynicism and hostility Thesepopulation data suggest another category ofharm to persons: diminished moral agency Chronic socioeconomic deprivation can createenvironments that undermine the development ofself and capacities constitutive to moralagency – ie, the capacity forself-determination and crafting a life of one'sown The harm affects not only the choicesa person makes, but the chooser herself Thismoral harm is particularly salient in modernWestern societies, especially in the UnitedStates, where success and failure is attributedto the individual, with little notice of thelarger social and political realities thatinform an individual's circumstances and choices

Erika Blacksher

Papers

Place-focused physical activity research, human agency, and social justice in public health: taking agency seriously in studies of the built environment.

What is public deliberation

Public Deliberation in Health Policy and Bioethics: Mapping an emerging, interdisciplinary field

Genomics, Health Disparities, and Missed Opportunities for the Nation's Research Agenda.

On being poor and feeling poor: low socioeconomic status and the moral self.