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This article explores the ethics and transformative potential of youth participatory action research (yPAR) using data from a 2‐year school‐based yPAR study at an elite, independent school in Toronto, Canada. I use discourse analysis to show how school‐based yPAR with racialized girls intensified their experiences of gendered racism, shaping the research in a circular fashion. I demonstrate how youth researchers' strategies for counteracting this intensification contradicted the project's critical race feminist investments. This study concludes that yPAR facilitators must address the potential/actual harm of youth researchers' involvement in yPAR as part of the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies crip theory (McRuer, 2006, 2018) as well as other key conceptual tools from disabled childhood studies (Runswick-Cole et al., 2018) and disability studies in education (Cousik & Maconochie, 2017) as a tactic intended to question and resist the story of overcoming as it manifests itself within the discourses and practices of self-regulation in early learning classrooms. This paper offers a brief overview of the range of self-regulation strategies enacted within educational settings in Ontario, Canada, that purport to support young children in overcoming themselves on their way to normalcy. This paper also engages in crip theory as a strategy to both question and disrupt the taken for granted assumption that self-regulation entails a return towards or a sustaining of the efficient and productive neoliberal individual in school systems. Finally, this paper considers how we might not only invite but embrace the disruptions that occur when embodied differences refuse to be overcome by demands to self-regulate. Ultimately, a key aim of this paper is to resist how discourses and practices of self-regulation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) establish the overcoming narrative as a means to cure, fix or exclude embodied differences while contemplating the vibrant possibilities embedded within learning with and from disabled childhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the government of Ontario, Canada, introduced Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020-2025), the province's third poverty reduction strategy. This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the discourses that emerge in this strategy and examine instances of intertextuality between it and previous strategy iterations. Several discourses (re)emerge suggesting that people living in poverty, and disabled people specifically, must 'realize their potential' by becoming more 'resilient' and work towards 'life stabilization'. The 'self-sufficiency' discourse in prior poverty reduction strategies, recast as 'independence' in this newest rendition, anchors the strategy to problematic understandings of 'dependency'. The systemic causes of poverty are negated, as is a rights-based framework for poverty alleviation. The Ontario government does not define the poverty reduction strategy's success in terms of poverty reduction, but as mere social assistance caseload reductions, and as such, has built 'a strong foundation for its lackluster success'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sophisticated algorithms are used daily to search through hundreds of medical journals in order to package updated medical insights into commercial databases. Healthcare practitioners can access these searchable databases—called Point of Care (PoC) tools—as downloadable apps on their smartphones or tablets to comprehensively and efficiently inform patient diagnosis and treatment. Because racist biases are unintentionally incorporated into the search reports that the companies generate and that practitioners regularly access, the aim of this article is to examine how healthcare practitioners' "pre-existing" racial stereotypes interact with pithy conclusions about race and ethnicity in PoC tools. I use qualitative research methods (content analysis, discourse analysis, open-ended semi-structured interviews, and role play) to frame the analysis within the Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP). This approach facilitates an understanding of how biological racism—the use of scientific evidence to support inherent differences between races—that is embedded in PoC algorithms informs a practitioner's assessment of a patient, and converges with persistent racial bias in medical training, medical research and healthcare. I contextualize the study with one semi-structured interview with an Editor of a leading PoC tool, MedScope (pseudonomized), and 10 semi-structured interviews with healthcare practitioners in S.E. Ontario, Canada. The article concludes that PoC tools and practitioners' personal biases contribute to racial prejudices in healthcare provision. This warrants further research on racial bias in medical literature and curriculum design in medical school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although higher education typically strengthens people with disabilities' chances to be in a competitive job market as a leverage to break away from poverty, the contemporary marketization of higher education within the era of neoliberalism has made degrees and diplomas increasingly unaffordable. The federal government responded to this predicament by increasing the Canada Social Transfer to offer up-front targeted funding to students with disabilities in 2008. However, virtually no literature has acknowledged whether financial grants meaningfully provide students with disabilities with an equitable opportunity to engage in post-secondary education. Using critical discourse analysis on government online materials that address federal and provincial disability grants for post-secondary students with disabilities in Alberta and Ontario, this study reveals how the neoliberal rhetoric of personal responsibility shapes the practice of government disability grants. This practice can leave students with 'more responsibility' while rendering 'less control' over their finances in an already disabling world. This study looks at how language is communicated by federal and provincial government grants to post-secondary students with disabilities in Alberta and Ontario. The research found that Canadian financial assistance programs for students with disabilities have been operating using techniques that largely reflect self-reliance and personal responsibility. Students with disabilities are left with more responsibilities to prove their worthiness for assistance. At the same time, students cannot know for sure whether they will receive the necessary funds to continue their studies. Medical understandings of disability are strictly used to determine the eligibility for financial assistance, leaving little room for students to decide what they need to suit their individual needs best. The findings suggest that government financial assistance programs are not firmly committed to providing students with disabilities with an equitable opportunity to engage in PSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A transition toward decentralized and land-intensive renewable energy production systems is one among many factors re-shaping rural areas, leading to reimaginations and contestations. Especially in the Global North, the rural narrative now includes not just rural 'production' but also the 'consumption' of rural amenity and experience. Previous research into public attitudes toward renewable energy correlates the former with positive attitudes to renewable energy, and the latter with negative attitudes toward renewable energy. Territorial structures, such as official land-use plans, reflect dominant discourses and narratives that shape ongoing rural transformation. The purpose of this work is to understand the extent to which, if at all, those correlations at the individual level between landscape conceptualizations and sentiment toward renewable energy are manifest in territorial structures. In what ways are energy transitions present in rural land-use plans and planning systems? Is there a relationship between how rural landscapes are conceptualized and how energy transitions are framed and addressed, in land-use planning systems? These questions are answered through a structured content and discourse analysis of 10 land-use plans of rural municipalities in southern Ontario; an agriculturally intensive region that hosts much of Ontario's large-scale renewable energy systems. Correlations observed between landscape conceptualizations and sentiment toward renewable energy observed are not strongly reflected in land-use plans. Land-use plans in this region are not positioned to manage the place-based opportunities and impacts associated with renewable energy development. The research reveals an opportunity for rural land-use planning systems to more explicitly incorporate energy transitions in their evolving discourses, identities and development trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cannabis legalization is often referred to as a moral issue. However, given the limits of morality policy as a distinct policy subcategory and the contemporary dominance of technocratic politics, one could wonder if it is really framed as such within political institutions. In this article, I ask how moral frames compete and interact with other frames in debates over morality policy. Working with a moral/epistemic dichotomy, I conduct framing analysis on parliamentary debates in Quebec, Ontario, and Maine, which have recently reformulated their cannabis policy. Although trends in framing vary across cases, moral frames are consistently less salient than epistemic frames. Furthermore, a pattern of complementary framing is found, whereby actors combine moral and epistemic frames. Overall, this study shows that cannabis policy is often framed as nonmoral, and that its moral component is nonexclusive. I conclude by discussing some implications of these findings in the post‐legalization landscape. Related Articles: Branton, Regina, and Ronald J. McGauvran. 2018. "Mary Jane Rocks the Vote: The Impact of Climate Context on Support for Cannabis Initiatives." Politics & Policy 46(2): 209–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12248. Brekken, Katheryn C., and Vanessa M. Fenley. 2021. "Part of the Narrative: Generic News Frames in the U.S. Recreational Marijuana Policy Subsystem." Politics & Policy 49(1): 6–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12388. Fisk, Jonathan M., Joseph A. Vonasek, and Elvis Davis. 2018. "'Pot'Reneurial Politics: The Budgetary Highs and Lows of Recreational Marijuana Policy Innovation." Politics & Policy 46(2): 189–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12246. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landlord–tenant relations are one of the core social relations of daily life yet are surprisingly under-theorized by housing scholars and geographers. This article begins to address this gap by applying for feminist scholarship on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to the case of the expansion and subsequent retrenchment of rent-control policy in Ontario, Canada in 2017–2018. Through a discourse analysis of government policy documents and news media coverage, I demonstrate that portrayals of landlords and tenants broadly conformed to characteristics of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, respectively, with landlords most commonly portrayed as 'rational' and tenants most commonly portrayed as 'vulnerable'. Landlords benefit from traits associated with hegemonic masculinity even if they themselves do not embody them. Similarly, landlords benefit from the portrayal of tenants as passive victims, in need of paternalistic government protection, as opposed to potentially powerful collective actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore media reporting on the role of nurses as being consistently positioned 'heroes' during COVID‐19. In so doing, it highlights multiple intersecting discourses at play, with the caring discourse acting as a central one in negatively impacting nurses' ability to advocate for safe working conditions during a public health emergency. Drawing on media reports during the outbreak of COVID‐19 in Ontario, Canada in the spring of 2020 and on historical information from SARS, this study seeks to establish caring as a discourse and examine if the caring discourse impedes nurses' ability to protect themselves from harm. The results of this analysis explicate how public media discourses that position nurses as caring, sacrificial and heroic may have impacted their ability to maintain their personal safety as a result of the expectations put upon the nursing profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender-based relations of power and attributions of blame for child sexual abuse have been longstanding in child welfare policy and practice. Nonoffending mothers continue to be ascribed responsibility through the ideologically and institutionally entrenched doctrine of failure to protect. Feminist critical discourse analysis was used to (a) expose and disrupt dominant discourses of gender, motherhood, and risk that operate to construct and reinforce notions of blame and failure to protect, as enacted by way of child welfare text in context; and (b) build a credible case for social and organizational change grounded in an alternative discourse with greater explanatory power. Progressive avenues for resistance, negotiation, and transformation are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community engagement in municipal decision-making can help strengthen trust and confidence in the government. A more nuanced understanding of how modern Canadian municipalities can engage residents in decision-making processes is needed. Thus, this case study investigates how community engagement is a strategy to achieve municipal policy objectives in a mid-sized Canadian city. The findings of a discourse analysis of municipal documents suggest the City of Kitchener utilizes their Love My Hood initiative as a means of cultivating a culture of engagement with residents, creating a nuanced city and community relationship. Moreover, the findings help reflect on Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation, moving to a multifaceted approach to engagement, including the timing and type of engagement included in the decision-making process. Cities must be transparent about the role of residents within the planning process and under what strategy the City wants to involve residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particular types of nature-based tourism programs, including multi-day children's overnight/residential summer camp canoe tripping programs in North America, often (re)produce (neo)colonial constructions of nature and the "wilderness." The purpose of this paper is to expose how wilderness is constructed and circulated in the context of a particular summer camp's canoe trips in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Within this paper, we identify how specific legacies of colonialism are maintained and redeployed through the practices and representations of summer camp canoe trippers. Specifically, analyses show how canoe trippers (re)produce and (re)enact the wilderness as seemingly empty, untouched, and pristine spaces. Drawing on a Foucauldian-styled discourse analysis, this research exposes recurrent power relations that normalize, re-inscribe, and enable unjust wilderness discourses on Canadian summer camp canoe trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I undertake a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and in-depth interviews with seven caseworkers and 28 benefit recipients to explore how two discourses, 'work first' and 'distance from the labour market,' inform how persons living with addiction access and then experience social assistance in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Drawing in Foucauldian insights on power, I reveal the conceptualisation of benefit recipients' eligibility for Ontario Works through these two discourses and how this is replete with ideological assumptions and disciplining power relations, constitutive of a subject position of 'the recovering addict', and suggestive of social control implications. I argue that the coercion and regulation of benefit recipients' lives on Ontario Works has not disappeared but transmuted for Torontonians living with addiction, and conclude by considering the governance of this population as biopower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Settler colonialism relies upon a logic of elimination that strives to dissolve Indigenous culture and title to ancestral lands. In Canada, settler colonialism has steered not only oppressive state policy directions, but also settler narratives that essentialize and displace Indigenous Peoples and cultural connections to land. Tourism is an especially potent social force through which such settler stories can be perpetuated and resisted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Indigenous culture is portrayed in the tourism promotional landscape of Ontario's 'near north', a rural leisure landscape for nature enthusiasts and second-home owners. While Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee First Nations have inhabited this area for generations, their cultural presence is often marginalized in development discourses, both historical and contemporary. Our study draws upon critical discourse analysis of websites produced by stakeholders associated with three case study sites - a Provincial Park, an annual cranberry Festival, and a major casino operation - to understand both the limits and opportunities of tourism in relation to maintaining and revitalizing Indigenous culture. In so doing, our paper contributes to critiques of settler colonial power relations and how these infiltrate tourism, and identifies pathways for disrupting the erasure of Indigenous cultures in tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how transgender and gender non-conforming youth are represented and shaped as specific subjects vis-à-vis the cisgendered problematics of the washroom space in schools. In the first part of the paper, I undertake a critical analysis of one policy-informing text on the implementation of the gender neutral washroom in schools to consider how the transgender and gender non-conforming student is constituted through specific discourses of accommodation, submission and protection that delimit their recognisability and force a potential risk of misrecognition. I also draw upon my own empirical research [Ingrey, Jennifer C. 2014. "The Public School Washroom as Heterotopia: Gendered Spatiality and Subjectification." PhD diss., University of Western Ontario] to prioritize transgender and genderqueer voices and provide an analysis of the practice of recognition. The analysis is grounded in [Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Translated and edited by Colin Gordon. New York, NY: Pantheon Books; Foucault, Michel. 2000. "Afterword: The Subject and Power." In Michel Foucault: Power, edited by James D. Faubion and Paul Rabinow, 326-348. New York, NY: The New Press] the analytics of subjectivation and pastoral power, [Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York, NY: Routledge] the politics of recognition of the self, [Juang's, Richard M. 2006. "Transgendering the Politics of Recognition." In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker, and Stephen Whittle, 706-719. New York, NY: Routledge] transgendering of the politics of recognition, alongside [Bacchi's, Carol. 2009. Analysing Policy: What's the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson: Frenchs Forest, NSW] critical approach to policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) launched in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. Using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, we explore the dominant discourses that emerge in a genre chain produced by the Government of Ontario, including the initial 2008 PRS, annual reports and the 2014-2019 recontextualised PRS. Six key discourses surfaced: social exclusion, social inclusion, economic benefit or social investment, expert knowledge, community engagement and requisites for the PRS' success -- typically involving investments from the federal government and a favourable economic climate. No discourse of human rights, or of the rights to food, housing and an adequate standard of living is present in the PRS texts, absolving the government from its responsibility to ensure these rights. Without the accountability mechanisms attached to a rights-based approach, the PRS has little chance of 'breaking the cycle' of poverty, and will not likely 'realise its potential' to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A technology in smart farming, the Internet of Things (IoT), is predicted to continue altering farm life by introducing opportunities and obstacles. However, there are limited studies on how farmers' views of IoT influence their decision-making regarding technology adoption. To understand what characterises farmers' experiences with IoT, we conducted a discourse analysis of 32 interviews with farmers in Ontario. Discourse analysis was used to understand the range of meanings associated with IoT by farmers. We find that two main discourses are present (1) the extent to which IoT was viewed as useful/helpful vs not useful/unhelpful and (2) the extent to which IoT was viewed as being their choice. The results indicate that farmers respond to IoT in four categories: embrace, accept, ignore, and caution. This paper contributes to the literature by categorising the farmers' responses to IoT implementation and highlighting why farmers adopt these categories. Current literature recognizes that diagnosing the current readiness and use of innovations is a proxy for their readiness to scale. Understanding how farmers view opportunities enabled by IoT and how they experience the diffusion of IoT is a foundation for suggesting recommendations for technology improvement and development in agriculture. [Display omitted] • Internet of Things is predicted to continue to alter farm life. • There are limited studies on how farmer's views of IoT influence adoption. • We conducted a discourse analysis of 32 interviews with farmers in Ontario. • Two main discourses were identified. The results indicate that farmers respond to IoT in four categories. • This work contributes by categorising the farmers response to perceived pressures and why farmers adopt these categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several United Nations bodies have advised countries to actively preserve Traditional Medicine (TM) knowledge and prevent its misappropriation in regulatory structures. To help advance decision-making around this complex regulatory issue, we examine the relationship between risk discourse, epistemology and policy. This study presents a critical, postcolonial analysis of divergent risk discourses elaborated in two contrasting Ontario (Canada) government reports preceding that jurisdiction's regulation of acupuncture, the world's most widely practised TM therapy. The earlier (1996) report, produced when Ontario's regulatory lobby was largely comprised of Chinese medicine practitioners, presents a risk discourse inclusive of biomedical and TM knowledge claims, emphasizing the principle of regulatory ‘equity’ as well as historical and sociocultural considerations. Reflecting the interests of an increasingly biomedical practitioner lobby, the later (2001) report uses implicit discursive means to exclusively privilege Western scientific perspectives on risk. This report's policy recommendations, we argue, suggest misappropriation of TM knowledge. We advise regulators to consider equitable adaptations to existing policy structures, and to explicitly include TM evidentiary perspectives in their pre-regulatory assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputes regarding life-prolonging treatments are stressful for all parties involved. These disagreements are appropriately almost always resolved with intensive communication and negotiation. Those rare cases that are not require a resolution process that ensures fairness and due process. We describe three recent cases from different countries (the United States, United Kingdom, and Ontario, Canada) to qualitatively contrast the legal responses to intractable, policy-level disputes regarding end-of-life care in each of these countries. In so doing, we define the continuum of clinical and social utility among different types of dispute resolution processes and emphasize the importance of public reason-giving in the societal discussion regarding policy-level solutions to end-of-life treatment disputes. We argue that precedential, publicly available, written rulings for these decisions most effectively help to move the social debate forward in a way that is beneficial to clinicians, patients, and citizens. This analysis highlights the lack of such rulings within the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter is a discourse analysis of news stories about mining in northern Ontario, which were published in the Indigenous newspaper Wawatay News. It examines the claim that the traditional environmental knowledge of the Indigenous populations in North America functions as an ethnic symbol distinguishing First Nations people from other Canadians. It was found that few news stories about mining in 2011 in the territory of the readers of Wawatay News portrayed a modern version of traditional environmental knowledge. Instead, the dominant discourse in most stories was a conservative environmental ethic consistent with Euro-Canadian values. In conclusion, it is argued that the dominant environmental discourse of Wawatay News reflects the weak organizational structure of Indigenous newspapers in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed as a public health problem, school bullying led public health agencies to design anti-bullying programmes. The public health approach is invested with hope by those who are looking for an alternative to the punitive logic. Using a Foucaultian approach and a discourse analysis method, this research focuses on the way an anti-bullying intervention programme designed by a public health agency governs school bullying. The findings reveal two major logics at play. Firstly, the programme espouses the new public health model and, accordingly, governs bullying as a systemic risk rather than an individual problem. Secondly, the programme is also anchored in the classical punitive rationality. Public health and punitive logics, far from being mutually exclusive, are rather intertwined. This dual logic contributes to the ‘dangerization’ of school bullying. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A therapist's capacity to respond appropriately to a client is crucial in fostering positive therapeutic relationships and outcomes in general but it is even more important in cross-cultural therapy. Given the clinical significance of the dyad-specific and dynamic nature of the therapist's responsiveness, our study explores one white female therapist's responsiveness with three racial/ethnic minority clients in the beginning phase of therapy sessions. Using the structural analysis of social behavior and conversation analysis, the turn-by-turn intensive analysis of culturally relevant and nonrelevant talk in therapy illustrates how a therapist, who is appropriately and positively responsive to clients in other contexts, becomes disengaged and even negatively oriented during culturally relevant talk. This finding illustrates the challenges involved in maintaining positive engagement and responsiveness in cross-cultural therapeutic communication. Our findings also highlight the usefulness of focusing on moment-to-moment interactions in cross-cultural clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A common refrain in chronic disease management is that patients and clinicians need to enact new roles: patients as their own caregivers; clinicians as professional supporters of patient self-management activities. These roles are central to self-management support (SMS), an approach that emphasizes a clinical partnership, and promotes patient identification and achievement of realistic and short-term behavioral goals. With SMS, behavior change is the desired end, not the means to a desired biomedical end. Shifting SMS concepts into clinical practice has proven to be difficult and inconsistent, creating potential, unknown risks or harms to patients. We completed a discourse analysis of 16 clinical dialogues between diabetic patients and clinicians, collected during a study of six Ontario Family Health Teams, to explore the questions of risks and harms relating to SMS implementation. We observed varying degrees of incomplete implementation of SMS, as well as interactions that actively negated the core principles. Contrary to SMS principles, clinicians tended to emphasize behavioral changes as means to achieve biomedical ends, though to varying degrees. We present two appointments in detail, highlighting how linking behavior change closely with biomedical measures often elicited face-saving defenses from patients. The subsequent dialogue shifted attention away from problem solving and behavior change into active negotiation of responsibility and identity. Interactions that oriented more to SMS concepts elicited fewer defensive maneuvers from patients. Our analysis helps explicate one additional mechanism by which self-management talk threatens the clinical relationship, and highlights a promising method to mitigate this threat. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article reports on video analyses of 110 veterinary appointments in which pet-directedI knowreceipts were uttered by 15 veterinarians as responses to companion animals’ vocal and visible signals of distress. Patients’ distress was typically occasioned by medical activities constituting the appointment. The dual functions ofI knowas a claim of (a) prior knowledge of animals’ experiences and (b) shared feelings and affiliation with animals’ experiences made it an interactional resource for addressing client anxiety arising from the disalignment of animal patients with the goals of the appointment. Analysis of prosody, prefacing, the presence or absence of repeats, and postpositioned components demonstrated the flexibility of theI knowreceipt in modulating veterinarians’ stances toward their patients’ expressions of distress. Findings are discussed in relation to studies on the management of patient distress and pain in pediatric procedures and to previous research on clinician–patient empathy in veterinary medicine. Data are in Canadian English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by discourses that link early child development and health, nurses engage in seemingly benign surveillance of children. These practices are based on knowledge claims and technologies of developmental science, which remain anchored in assumptions of the child body as an incomplete form with a universal developmental trajectory and inherent potentiality. This paper engages in a critical discursive analysis, drawing on Donna Haraway's conceptualizations of technoscience and figuration. Using a contemporary developmental screening tool from nursing practice, this analysis traces the effects of this tool through production, transformation, distribution, and consumption. It reveals how the techniques of imaging, abstraction, and measurement collide to fix the open, transformative child body in a figuration of the developing child. This analysis also demonstrates how technobiopower infuses nurses' understandings of children and structures developmentally appropriate expectations for children, parents, and nurses. Furthermore, it describes how practices that claim to facilitate healthy child development may inversely deprive children of agency and foster the production of normal or ideal children. An alternative ontological perspective is offered as a challenge to the individualism of developmental models and other dominant ideologies of development, as well as practices associated with these ideologies. In summary, this analysis argues that nurses must pay closer attention to how technobiopower infuses practices that monitor and promote child development. Fostering a critical understanding of the harmful implications of these practices is warranted and offers the space to conceive of human development in alternate and exciting ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we argue that language functions as more than just a form of communication; it functions as a cognitive tool as well. The use of language to mediate complex cognitive functioning such as problem solving, attending, and recalling has been referred to as languaging. We demonstrate that languaging is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning in Agnes, a 94-year-old resident of a long-term care facility. The enhanced cognitive functioning was reflected in an increase in discourse builders and a decrease in discourse impairments over a 2-month period during which Agnes engaged in languaging activities. We suggest that volunteers could be trained to implement languaging activities, which take more time to implement than many staff members have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study to evaluate the processes by which organizational texts, language, metaphors, and symbols have facilitated institutionalization of integrated treatment for concurrent disorders. The study concluded that research evidence on comorbidity, government reports, and other organizational texts have led to the concept of integration. The importance of certain catalysts that make the environment conducive to change such as timing, and importance of problem are included.

In Canada, obesity is increasingly emphasised as a 'risk' to the health of mother and foetus. At a time when pregnant women are under greater pressure to personally uphold the health of their foetus, understanding the impact of the discourse surrounding obesity and health on young pregnant women is critical. Using a feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, we explore how pregnant young women construct their subjectivities either within dominant discourse on health and obesity or possibly resistant discourses. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 15 pregnant women between the ages of 18 and 28, coming from various socioeconomic and educational backgrounds in the Ottawa region. The analysis reveals that these women constitute themselves as complex, fragmented subjects who at times construct themselves within alternative and resistant discourses but generally reproduce dominant discourses of obesity, of individual and moral responsibility for health, and of maternal responsibility for foetal health. Implications for health promotion and policy strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction In recent years, a focus on workers' ability, rather than impairment, has guided disability management services. However, a challenge with the notion of 'ability' is identification of the border between ability and inability. This article considers this gray zone of disability management in the case of a workers' compensation vocational retraining program for injured workers in Ontario. Methods In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with a purposive sample of 71 participants who were directly involved with the vocational retraining process. Workers in the program had on average incurred injury 3 years earlier. Procedural and legal documents were also analyzed. Principles of grounded theory and discourse analysis guided the data gathering and analysis. Results A program focus on worker abilities did not allow for consideration of unresolved medical problems. Concepts such as maximum medical rehabilitation distracted attention from workers' ongoing chronic and unstable health situations, and incentive levers to employers directed some of the least capable workers into the program. As well, communication pathways for discussing health problems were limited by rules and provider reluctance to reveal problems. Therefore, workers completing the program were deemed 'employable', while ongoing and problematic health conditions preventing employment remained relatively uncharted and invisible. Conclusions This study reinforces how the shift in disability management paradigm to a focus on ability and return to work requires consideration of environmental conditions, including policies and programs and implementation. A focus on the environment in which worker ability can be enacted might be as important as a focus on improving individual worker characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After briefly reviewing the production of nuclear energy and waste in Canada, this paper uses two small Ontario towns as case studies to examine the treatment of low-level radioactive waste and the communities’ responses and narratives to it. Both towns, Port Hope and Kincardine, have long histories of dealing with such waste. Using interviews, relevant websites and past accounts, this paper employs a discourse analysis to understand the differences in risk perceptions and living with the presence of these materials. Ideas from landscape narratives are employed to show that responses in Port Hope are dominated by death, elegy and crime, whereas those in Kincardine are predominately linked to progressivism and optimism. We explore the characteristics of each case to highlight the reasons for these differences. We conclude by emphasizing the potential role of narrative analysis in informing policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We investigated how persons from key populations at higher risk of HIV exposure interpreted the process and outcomes of the Step Study HIV-1 vaccine trial, which was terminated early, and implications for willingness to participate in and community support for HIV vaccine research. Methods. We used qualitative methods and a community-based approach in 9 focus groups (n=72) among ethnically and sexually diverse populations and 6 semistructured key informant interviews in Ontario, Canada, in 2007 to 2008. Results. Participants construed social meaning from complex clinical and biomedical phenomena. Social representations and mental models emerged in fears of vaccine-induced infection, conceptualizations of unfair recruitment practices and increased risk behaviors among trial participants, and questioning of informed consent. Narratives of altruism and the common good demonstrated support for future trials. Conclusions. Public discourse on HIV vaccine trials is a productive means of interpreting complex clinical trial processes and outcomes in the context of existing beliefs and experiences regarding HIV vaccines, medical research, and historical disenfranchisement. Strategic engagement with social representations and mental models may promote meaningful community involvement in biomedical HIV prevention research. INSET: Semistructured Interview Guide for Study of Reactions to the.... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Blue-collar workers are a recognised priority for tobacco control. Construction workers have very high smoking rates and are difficult to study and reach with interventions promoting smoke-free workplaces and cessation. The objectives of this study were to explore the smoking-related social climate in the North American residential construction sector and to identify potential barriers and facilitators to creating smokefree worksites. Methods The data source used was a popular internet forum on home building. Participants included a broad and unselected population of employers, employees and freelance tradespersons working in residential construction. The forum archive contained 10 years of discourse on the subjects of smoking, workplace secondhand smoke and smoking restrictions on construction sites. Qualitative data analysis methods were used to describe major and minor discussion themes relevant to workplace smoking culture and policies in this sector. Results Participants described considerable tension between smoking and non-smoking tradespersons, but there was also much interpersonal support for cessation and support for non-smokers' rights. Employers and employees described efforts to make construction sites smoke free, and a movement towards preferential hiring of non-smoking tradespersons was discussed. Board participants wanted detailed scientific evidence on secondhand smoke exposure levels and risk thresholds, particularly in open-air workplaces. Conclusions Experience with success of smoking bans in other challenging workplaces can be applied to the construction sector. Potential movement of smokers out of the workforce represents a challenge for public health systems to ensure equitable access to cessation supports and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(2011) Journal of Nursing Management 293-301 Drawing on the works of Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault, this article presents part of the results of a qualitative study conducted in a forensic psychiatry setting. For many years, behaviour modification programmes (BMPs) have been subjected to scrutiny and harsh criticism on the part of researchers, clinicians and professional organizations. Nevertheless, BMPs continue to be in vogue in some 'total' institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals and prisons. Discourse analysis of mute evidence available in situ was used to critically look at behaviour modification programmes. Compelling examples of behaviour modification care plans are used to illustrate our critical analysis and to support our claim that BMPs violate both scientific and ethical norms in the name of doing 'what is best' for the patients. We argue that the continued use of BMPs is not only flawed from a scientific perspective, but constitutes an unethical approach to the management of nursing care for mentally ill offenders. Nurse managers need to be aware that BMPs violate ethical standards in nursing. As a consequence, they should overtly question the use of these approaches in psychiatric nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication for informed choice is particularly challenging in clinical settings such as direct-entry midwifery, where the care model embraces diverse therapies and forms of knowledge. We identified three discursive moves (explanation, invocation, and evaluation) that Ontario midwives and clients used in making claims about proposed interventions. The analysis was informed by an understanding of communication as an interactionally situated and socially constructed interpretive practice. Both midwives and women called on the authority of biomedical discourse, but they also turned to sources such as women's wisdom to support their cases. The flexible use of these moves afforded participants considerable latitude in accepting or rejecting forms of evidence as authoritative. However, strategies designed to empower clients in making choices could unintentionally serve to enhance the authority of the care provider. Talk about interventions brings into view both the knowledge systems and the broader relations within which regulated midwifery practice operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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