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Laboratory practitioners working in oncology are increasingly involved in implementing genomic medicine, operating at the intersection of the laboratory and the clinic. This includes molecular diagnostic work and molecular testing to direct entry into molecular-based clinical trials and treatment decision-making based on molecular profiling. In this article, we draw on qualitative interviews with laboratory practitioners in the United Kingdom to explore the role of laboratory work in genomic cancer medicine, focusing on the handling of patient tissue and making of potentiality to guide patients' present and future care. With an increase in molecular testing to inform standard care and clinical trial participation, we show how practitioners "potentialized" the tissue by carefully negotiating what to test, how to test, and when. This included maximizing and managing small amounts of tissue in anticipation of possible future patient care. Tissue archives also took on new meaning, and potentiality, which practitioners negotiated alongside patient care. Potentiality was key to generating the "big" future of genomic medicine and also involved care work where the tissue emerged as an extension of the patient, as a form of "material patienthood," to secure present and future care for patients through their involvement in genomic medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While parents have long received guidance on how to raise children, a relatively new element of this involves explicit references to infant brain development, drawing on brain scans and neuroscientific knowledge. Sometimes called 'brain-based parenting', this has been criticised from within sociological and policy circles alike. However, the engagement of parents themselves with neuroscientific concepts is far less researched. Drawing on 22 interviews with parents/carers of children (mostly aged 0–7) living in Scotland, this article examines how they account for their (non-)use of concepts and understandings relating to neuroscience. Three normative tropes were salient: information about children's processing speed, evidence about deprived Romanian orphans in the 1990s, and ideas relating to whether or not children should 'self-settle' when falling asleep. We interrogate how parents reflexively weigh and judge such understandings and ideas. In some cases, neuroscientific knowledge was enrolled by parents in ways that supported biologically reductionist models of childhood agency. This reductionism commonly had generative effects, enjoining new care practices and producing particular parent and infant subjectivities. Notably, parents do not uncritically adopt or accept (sometimes reductionist) neurobiological and/or psychological knowledge; rather, they reflect on whether and when it is applicable to and relevant for raising their children. Thus, our respondents draw on everyday epistemologies of parenting to negotiate brain-based understandings of infant development and behaviour, and invest meaning in these in ways that cannot be fully anticipated (or appreciated) within straightforward celebrations or critiques of the content of parenting programmes drawing on neuropsychological ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of sociological work exploring the importance and meaning of kinship. Much of this work has criticized the 'individualization' thesis according to which changes in family structures over time have been interpreted as reflecting a fundamental decline in family values. Highlighting continuities as well as change in family life, this work has also suggested ways to move beyond the individualization debate and to develop alternative frameworks for the study of contemporary families and personal life, notably through the analysis of related practices. For various reasons, this recent work has focused primarily on the experience and practices of adults in 'ordinary' rather than more difficult family circumstances. This article aims to complement this work by focusing on the difficult family experiences of young people affected by parental substance use. It is argued that it is important not to lose sight of such experiences in order that sociological thinking reflect the diversity of family practices and the resources available to support them, including at younger ages. In addition, the importance of developing concepts or a language facilitating the exploration and communication of the emotional and symbolic significance of these practices is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern is increasing about children growing up in families where there are substance use problems but relatively little is known about the perspectives of the children themselves. This article reports on a qualitative study with young people who grew up in such families, exploring their accounts of their daily lives at home, school and leisure. The study focuses on the everyday interactions, practices and processes the young people felt helped them to 'get by' in their challenging childhoods, showing how the protective factors thought to promote 'resilience' were seldom in place for them unconditionally and without associated costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical examination of theories of reflexive modernity with respect to the new human genetics draws on a range of empirical studies and conceptual critiques. In it we explore the ways in which genetic knowledge and testing technologies offer new choices, construct new risks and generate public and professional ambivalence. We contrast this with the processes of ordering, reduction and control suffusing these developments. We argue that reductionism and determinism continue to infuse genetic theories and methods, that scientific and social progress are collapsed anew, and that certitude and surveillance remain powerful guiding principles. Within this context, the reflexive potential of individual choice, personal responsibility and risk estimation is seriously undermined. Indeed, in the case of the new human genetics, it seems that reflexive modernisation promotes, rather than curtails, a new modern/counter-modern eugenics. This occurs through the privatisation of lay ambivalence and professionals' successful institutional reflexivity. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of our reflections for sociology and participatory democracy more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study that explored the accounts of eugenics made by a small but important group of British scientists and clinicians working on the genetics as applied to human health. Background information of the study; Focus of the debate about the genetics and eugenics; Discussion and conclusion of the study.

Drawing on data from a study of grandparenthood, this paper examines the nature of projected action, and the value of the concept of `rule' in both lay and sociological reasoning. The way in which people becoming grandparents for the first time defined grandparenthood is analysed through an examination of their formulations of appropriate grandparenting behaviour, as elicited in qualitative interviews. Although much was left ill-defined, grandparental involvement with the younger generations was accounted as being bounded by certain rules or guidelines which served to restrict grandparental action, and set limits to their intended behaviour. Three main restrictions on potential action were noted: `not-interfering', `sharing', and `not-spoiling'; the grandparents' elaborations of these will be examined. They seemed to express underlying `rules' which represented a way of speaking about or making sense of a future role. However, the failure of these `rules' to perform as clear cut prescriptions for behaviour enabled the grandparents to develop a role for themselves. Notions of appropriate grandparenting behaviour were found to be based on personal experience or commonsense knowledge. Drawing on their knowledge of family life, the grandparents were able to give themselves a positive but nonetheless non-interfering role. The personal characteristics and expectations of the grandparents, as people able and willing to spend time with their families, seemed to create an inherent contradiction in their projections of a grandparental role. Yet it was such different relevances which facilitated the production of a potentially satisfactory set of practices for `doing grandparenting'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems involved in assessing the meaning and significance of becoming a grandfather are tied to the issue of the contextual production of sociological data. Grandfatherhood is analysed by taking into account the way in which the grandfathers contributed in research interviews. Since they did not speak readily about grandfatherhood, it becomes difficult for an investigator to describe its features. An assessment of grandfathers' roles showed that indeed they had little to do during the early months of grandfatherhood, thus reinforcing their reticent role in the interview setting. Yet, grandfatherhood was still held to be something significant, and the respondents, in this study, provided explanations of why it was difficult to understand or assess this. By focusing on such respondent accounts the problems of gender and method in sociological research can be more clearly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines new genetics professionals' account of the social context of their work, in light of the growth of experimental genetics. It analyses accounts given in interview by so called elite group of scientists and clinicians. It considers interviewees' discourse about knowledge, exploring the way in which they separate science from society. It then go on to consider the reasons for such a discursive boundary, exploring the interviewees' wider discourse about expertise and responsibility for the social implications of the new genetics. It argues that interviewees' discursive boundaries allow them to appeal variously to their objectivity, to dismiss bad science and to characterize the public as ignorant. However, these discursive boundaries are permeable and flexible, and are employed to support the new genetics professionals' role in guiding education and government policy, while at the same time deflecting ultimate responsibility for the use of knowledge on to an abstract and amorphous society. Responsibility is flexibly embraced and abrogated. These flexible discursive boundaries, thus, promote rather than challenge the cognitive authority of new genetics professionals as they engage in debates about the social implications of their work. The article concludes by challenging the replication of these discursive boundaries, noting some of the implications of such a critique for evaluation of the new genetics.