Susan Pickard
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3603763 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Susan Pickard |
| NOMBRES | Susan |
| APELLIDO | Pickard |
| FIRMA | PICKARD S |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3429-8880 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 42 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 219 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1994 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Embodied transitions
This article explores how menopause is narrated, embodied, and re-signified by minority ethnic women in the UK, drawing on in-depth qualitative research with participants of Chinese and Black ethnicities. Dominant narratives in the Global North frequently frame menopause through a biomedical lens of loss, dysfunction, and hormonal deficit, or more recently, as a postfeminist site of "ageless empowerment" marked by pharmaceutical rescue. This stud…
Taking upon ourselves the entirety of our human state
This paper focuses on Othering as a cultural form of ageism, discussed in some detail by Simone de Beauvoir in The Coming of Age. Through Othering, older people are treated as fundamentally different to the rest of (younger) society with consequences including social alienation, oppression and economic inequality. However, whilst clearly detrimental to older people themselves, this distancing is also malignant for the rest of society in diminishi…
Embodying and Resisting Urban Heat Injustice
Heat is a central concern for many cities whose efforts for adaptation tend to reproduce inequities. While community‐led adaptation has been considered key for enhancing just outcomes, how migrants from majority world countries are in‐ or excluded from local visions and practices of adaptation has rarely been asked. Through participatory photography and in‐depth interviews, we examine the ways through which migrant residents strive for a healthy …
Les Belles Images
This paper reads Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images as a warning about the future of gender equality in a neoliberal economy. Drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man and on contemporary neoliberal feminism descended from Betty Friedan’s ideal of a “balanced life,” it shows how capitalist and patriarchal norms underpin both consumer society and emancipatory discourse. Beauvoir resists these through her “unbalanced” protagonist, whose …
Persephone at Mid-Life
This article suggests that feminist archetypal theory provides a helpful and empowering framework through which to understand embodied change as experienced in contemporary times. A mainstream approach associated with second-wave feminism, it has fallen victim to poststructuralist critiques and is rarely used, despite a renewed popularity of goddess archetypes in broader lay culture. I argue that this framework deserves revisiting as, in generati…
The Red Dressing Gown
This article explores Beauvoir’s evolving attitude toward aging and old age, specifically the shift from a fear and horror of aging toward a positive acceptance, and links this transformation to the death of her mother. It suggests that Beauvoir resolved her intense and complex relationship with her mother when the latter was dying, replacing melancholia with mourning and abjection with recognition. Escaping from the attraction and fears inherent…
Beauvoir or Butler? Comparing ‘Becoming a Woman’ with ‘Performing Gender’ Through the Life Course
Judith Butler claims to have based her theory of gender performance on Simone de Beauvoir’s path-breaking idea that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. However, Butler’s interpretation of Beauvoir’s work departs considerably from Beauvoir’s own expressed view which is that women are shaped by an interplay of femininity (construed by cultural and structural norms) and sexed bodies and that the concept of woman is a mutable one that can a…
Age-Related Digital Divide during the Covid-19 Pandemic in China
China has adopted a variety of digital technologies to effectively combat the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. The massive utilisation of digital technologies, however, to a great extent, magnifies the age-related digital divide. This paper aims to examine the impacts of the age-related digital divide on older adults in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cases of three age-related digital divide scenarios, including older people taking public …
Last love
Waiting like a girl? The temporal constitution of femininity as a factor in gender inequality
This paper explores temporal constituents of the female self in terms of their role in underpinning ongoing gender inequality. Drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young, together with sociological approaches to ambivalence, I suggest that these temporal subjectivities are embodied, arise from the split subjectivity associated with woman as simultaneously subject and object, and counterpose the neoliberal emphasis on "choice"…
On becoming a hag
In this article, I explore, through the novels of Elena Ferrante, the role played by the 'abject' in mediating ageing in women, focusing on its role in the movement from a disempowered to a more powerful subject position. The article has three sections. The first describes the role of the abject in constituting the feminine, focusing on the place of temporality and ageing in this process. Represented by the symbolic figure of the hag, the old wom…
From the third age to the third sex
Age War as the New Class War? Contemporary Representations of Intergenerational Inequity
This paper examines intergenerational justice discourses that feature prominently in both the contemporary UK media and beyond, arguing that these constitute both a continuation of previous debates about the economic and social burden of the dependent 'fourth age' and a newer and more prominent denigration of the 'third age', both of which possess deep cultural and psychological roots. Both themes are subsumed in the trope of the old as in some w…
Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course
Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course argues that the gendered structure of temporality (defined in the dual sense of everyday time as well as age and stage of life) is a key factor underpinning the stalling of the gender revolution. Taking as its central focus the idealised young woman who serves as the mascot of contemporary success, this book demonstrates how the celebration of the Girl is (i) representative of social mobility, edu…
Health, illness and frailty in old age
The aim of this paper is to subject the clinical classification of frailty to scrutiny through exploring, via a phenomenological lens, the lived experiences of older people who meet the objective, or clinical, criteria of frailty. Drawing on a range of published research that explores the heterogeneous experiences of embodied ageing, the paper highlights the continuity of phenomenological structures of experience across successful ageing, normal …
Sharon R. Kaufman, Ordinary Medicine
In this fascinating book Kaufman reflects on how a medicine that is both routine and high tech, in which implantable cardiac defibrillators, kidney dialysis, organ transplantation and aggressive cancer therapies are all standard treatments for older people, is profoundly shaping the experience and perceptions we have of old age. In the absence of any religious or publicly shared system of ethics, and in the context of an individualised society th…
Biology as destiny? Rethinking embodiment in ‘deep’ old age
Despite sociological understanding that bodies are social and morphological, material and discursive, there is a persistent, prevailing tendency within sociology to approach the old body – particularly in ‘deep old age’ – as non-social. No longer amenable either to reflexive (consumerist) choice, or expressive of the self, it is viewed rather through a biomedical explanatory framework in which it is held to succumb to ‘natural’ physiological proc…
Frail bodies
Clinical discourses of frailty are central both to the construction of the social category of the fourth age and to the role and identity of hospital geriatric medicine. However, the influence of such clinical discourses is not just from science to the social sphere and nor do these discourses have their source in a putative truth of the old body but emerge from an interplay between physiological facts, discourses of governmentality, productive p…
A new political anatomy of the older body? An examination of approaches to illness in old age in primary care
This paper examines the new approaches to older bodies found within primary care, with the purpose of determining whether they represent a significant disjunction from established approaches in geriatric medicine. A genealogical review of clinical approaches to certain conditions commonly found in old age is undertaken utilising (a) key texts of pioneering British geriatricians and (b) three editions of a key textbook of general practice, publish…
Knowing as practice
Health, illness and normality
The 'Good Carer
Informal carers in the context of late modernity must negotiate two potentially conflicting discourses. One is associated with a post-traditional and increasingly individualized society characterized by 'pure' relationships with an emphasis on authenticity and choice. The other is a more traditional discourse found particularly in current health and social policy which relies explicitly on significant input by family carers. This ar ticle analyse…
The role of governmentality in the establishment, maintenance and demise of professional jurisdictions
This paper examines the professionalising of geriatric medicine in the UK roughly between the 1940s and the 1970s and locates it in terms of the broader context of the relationship between the professions and the state. It looks at how this relationship shaped geriatric medicine's professional jurisdiction, including the discourses of expertise on the one hand and the constituting of the 'subjects' of such expertise on the other. In contrast to o…
Is Evidence‐Based Organizational Innovation in the NHS a Chimaera – Or Just Elusive
Evidence‐based adoption of organizational innovations requires explicit definition of the outcomes the innovations are intended to produce. Implementation theory, however, suggests that organizational innovations are often politicized in the sense that the prospect of implementing them provokes conflicts of interests among the parties affected. Then the intended outcomes of the innovation are liable to be formulated ambiguously, misleadingly or n…
The Professionalization of General Practitioners with a Special Interest
This article critically examines the professionalization of General Practitioners with Special Interests (GPSIs) in the UK. Drawing on empirical research it examines the rationale for the establishment of this professional grouping; the construction of the field of expertise; the negotiation of boundaries with other professions; issues of professional control and autonomy; and internal organization. It concludes that the professionalization of GP…
A subtle governance
In many countries governments are recruiting the medical profession into a more active, transparent regulation of clinical practice. Consequently the medical profession adapts the ways it regulates itself and its relationship to health system managers changes. This paper uses empirical research in English Primary Care Groups (PCGs) and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to assess the value of Courpasson's concept of soft bureaucracy as a conceptualisatio…
Age War as the New Class War? Contemporary Representations of Intergenerational Inequity
This paper examines intergenerational justice discourses that feature prominently in both the contemporary UK media and beyond, arguing that these constitute both a continuation of previous debates about the economic and social burden of the dependent 'fourth age' and a newer and more prominent denigration of the 'third age', both of which possess deep cultural and psychological roots. Both themes are subsumed in the trope of the old as in some w…
The Professionalization of General Practitioners with a Special Interest
This article critically examines the professionalization of General Practitioners with Special Interests (GPSIs) in the UK. Drawing on empirical research it examines the rationale for the establishment of this professional grouping; the construction of the field of expertise; the negotiation of boundaries with other professions; issues of professional control and autonomy; and internal organization. It concludes that the professionalization of GP…
Frail bodies
Clinical discourses of frailty are central both to the construction of the social category of the fourth age and to the role and identity of hospital geriatric medicine. However, the influence of such clinical discourses is not just from science to the social sphere and nor do these discourses have their source in a putative truth of the old body but emerge from an interplay between physiological facts, discourses of governmentality, productive p…
Health, illness and frailty in old age
The aim of this paper is to subject the clinical classification of frailty to scrutiny through exploring, via a phenomenological lens, the lived experiences of older people who meet the objective, or clinical, criteria of frailty. Drawing on a range of published research that explores the heterogeneous experiences of embodied ageing, the paper highlights the continuity of phenomenological structures of experience across successful ageing, normal …
Knowing as practice
The role of governmentality in the establishment, maintenance and demise of professional jurisdictions
This paper examines the professionalising of geriatric medicine in the UK roughly between the 1940s and the 1970s and locates it in terms of the broader context of the relationship between the professions and the state. It looks at how this relationship shaped geriatric medicine's professional jurisdiction, including the discourses of expertise on the one hand and the constituting of the 'subjects' of such expertise on the other. In contrast to o…
Governing Old Age
This article applies a Foucauldian approach to an examination of contemporary policy and practice towards older people, specifically a model of case management designed to manage older people 'at risk' of hospital admission. The article proceeds by reviewing old age policy over three historical time periods, emphasizing discontinuities and mutations, in an attempt to problematize the principles underlying case management. It then draws on empiric…
Exit, voice, governance and user-responsiveness
Contracts and the Quasi-market in Community Health Services
In the NHS quasi-market, contracts are the crucial mechanism through which purchasers influence providers of health care. Most attention has been given to the commissioning and contracting process in acute hospital services. However, there is another important but neglected sector of health care - community health services (CHS) - in which the specification and implementation of contracts is particularly difficult. In this article, three dimensio…
The 'Good Carer
Informal carers in the context of late modernity must negotiate two potentially conflicting discourses. One is associated with a post-traditional and increasingly individualized society characterized by 'pure' relationships with an emphasis on authenticity and choice. The other is a more traditional discourse found particularly in current health and social policy which relies explicitly on significant input by family carers. This ar ticle analyse…
Governmentality by Network in English Primary Healthcare
In England, the quality of clinical work is being regulated in new ways following recent developments in “clinical governance” policy and apparent failures in the previous system of medical self‐regulation. Using multiple case studies, this paper examines how these changes are affecting professional governmentality and discipline in general practice. Formal organizational structures play little role in clinical governance there. Clinical quality …
Citizenship and Consumerism in Health Care
This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of citizens’ juries as a model for public involvement in health care. It does so through observation of two citizens’ juries run by the same Health Authority, during the summer of 1996. The framework used to evaluate the juries is that provided by IPPR in their 1997 Report, namely focusing on the themes of information, time, scrutiny, deliberation, independence and authority. Citizens' juries are c…
Patient and carer perceptions of case management for long-term conditions
Nurse-led case management programmes have become increasingly popular over the last 15 years. Countries such as the USA, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands have long running case management programmes in place for frail elderly people. The Department of Health in England has recently introduced a 'community matron' role to provide case management to patients with highly complex long-term conditions; a group that is predominantly comprised of elde…
Waiting like a girl? The temporal constitution of femininity as a factor in gender inequality
This paper explores temporal constituents of the female self in terms of their role in underpinning ongoing gender inequality. Drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young, together with sociological approaches to ambivalence, I suggest that these temporal subjectivities are embodied, arise from the split subjectivity associated with woman as simultaneously subject and object, and counterpose the neoliberal emphasis on "choice"…
From the third age to the third sex
Last love
Biology as destiny? Rethinking embodiment in ‘deep’ old age
Despite sociological understanding that bodies are social and morphological, material and discursive, there is a persistent, prevailing tendency within sociology to approach the old body – particularly in ‘deep old age’ – as non-social. No longer amenable either to reflexive (consumerist) choice, or expressive of the self, it is viewed rather through a biomedical explanatory framework in which it is held to succumb to ‘natural’ physiological proc…
On becoming a hag
In this article, I explore, through the novels of Elena Ferrante, the role played by the 'abject' in mediating ageing in women, focusing on its role in the movement from a disempowered to a more powerful subject position. The article has three sections. The first describes the role of the abject in constituting the feminine, focusing on the place of temporality and ageing in this process. Represented by the symbolic figure of the hag, the old wom…
A new political anatomy of the older body? An examination of approaches to illness in old age in primary care
This paper examines the new approaches to older bodies found within primary care, with the purpose of determining whether they represent a significant disjunction from established approaches in geriatric medicine. A genealogical review of clinical approaches to certain conditions commonly found in old age is undertaken utilising (a) key texts of pioneering British geriatricians and (b) three editions of a key textbook of general practice, publish…
Comparing and contrasting the role of family carers and nurses in the domestic health care of frail older people
Care in the community has been constructed on the basis of professional support for carers who, as a result of community care policy that has released highly dependant people from residential care and long-stay wards, are carrying out a wide range of tasks, including complex health care activities. The present paper examines the health care activities currently undertaken by family carers and the way in which they work with, and are supported by,…
Public service responsiveness to users’ demands and needs
Analyses and policy statements about publicly funded services frequently distinguish ‘demands’ from ‘needs’. The distinction has been challenged, calling into question the coherence of formulating welfare policy and evaluating public services in terms of needs. This paper explicates the conceptual distinction between demands and needs in terms of derived demand and information asymmetry. ‘Needs’ can be defined as ‘rational demands’, where ‘ration…
Paradoxes of GP fundholding
Life After a Death
This paper looks at the experience of bereavement in old age in a South Wales locality and traces the immediate and long-term effects it has on the bereaved. It examines various categories of bereavement – death of spouse, death of the mother, death of a child, siblings and friends, with death of spouse as specially significant. In each category it closely relates the experience of bereavement to the nature of the relationship formerly maintained…
Challenging Professional Roles
The bulk of care in the community is carried out by lay carers. Recent policy initiatives to support them in the United Kingdom are outlined. There remains evidence of significant gaps in support from professional health and social‐care workers including community nurses. This paper reports three studies of lay carers: those caring for older people, carers of technology‐dependent children, and home‐care workers involved in the “direct payments” s…
Life After a Death
This paper looks at the experience of bereavement in old age in a South Wales locality and traces the immediate and long-term effects it has on the bereaved. It examines various categories of bereavement – death of spouse, death of the mother, death of a child, siblings and friends, with death of spouse as specially significant. In each category it closely relates the experience of bereavement to the nature of the relationship formerly maintained…
Local Voices in an Internal Market
This paper presents findings from a study of contract specification and implementation in community health services (CHS). In this paper, we focus on one aspect of that study: the role of local people in informing the assessment of health needs and in determining the provision of community health services in the context of the NHS “internal market”. The paper is based on fieldwork undertaken in three districts within one region. Analysis of data …
Contracts and the Quasi-market in Community Health Services
In the NHS quasi-market, contracts are the crucial mechanism through which purchasers influence providers of health care. Most attention has been given to the commissioning and contracting process in acute hospital services. However, there is another important but neglected sector of health care - community health services (CHS) - in which the specification and implementation of contracts is particularly difficult. In this article, three dimensio…
The Future Organization of Community Health Councils
This paper examines the ways in which Community Health Councils (CHCs) might organize themselves in the light of the changes arising out of the purchaser–provider split. These changes have meant that they are only one among several agencies claiming to represent the interests of the user, with most fundamentally the Health Authorities themselves being entrusted with the duty of championing the people. Other means of consulting the public, which b…
Paradoxes of GP fundholding
Citizenship and Consumerism in Health Care
This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of citizens’ juries as a model for public involvement in health care. It does so through observation of two citizens’ juries run by the same Health Authority, during the summer of 1996. The framework used to evaluate the juries is that provided by IPPR in their 1997 Report, namely focusing on the themes of information, time, scrutiny, deliberation, independence and authority. Citizens' juries are c…
Health care professionals' support for older carers
This paper examines four specific themes relating to older carers' experience: care-giving in the context of particular roles and relationships embedded in biographical histories; care in the context of dementia; care involving skilled or complex health care-tasks; and care of an intimate/personal nature. In each case, we look at the nature of support provided by health care professionals. Analysis of the data suggests several conclusions. Older …
A ‘Third Way’ for lay involvement
Aims and objectives This article considers evidence regarding lay involvement in the NHS, following the White Paper’s commitment to rebuild public confidence in an NHS ‘accountable to patients and open to the public and shaped by their views’. It looks at two aspects of lay involvement: the lay board member’s involvement in primary care group (PCG) decision‐making and the engagement of the PCG with the wider public. Methods The paper analyses dat…
User involvement in clinical governance
Objectives To investigate the involvement of users in clinical governance activities within Primary Care Groups (PCGs) and Trusts (PCTs). Drawing on policy and guidance published since 1997, the paper sets out a framework for how users are involved in this agenda, evaluates practice against this standard and suggests why current practice for user involvement in clinical governance is flawed and why this reflects a flaw in the policy design as muc…
Comparing and contrasting the role of family carers and nurses in the domestic health care of frail older people
Care in the community has been constructed on the basis of professional support for carers who, as a result of community care policy that has released highly dependant people from residential care and long-stay wards, are carrying out a wide range of tasks, including complex health care activities. The present paper examines the health care activities currently undertaken by family carers and the way in which they work with, and are supported by,…
Public service responsiveness to users’ demands and needs
Analyses and policy statements about publicly funded services frequently distinguish ‘demands’ from ‘needs’. The distinction has been challenged, calling into question the coherence of formulating welfare policy and evaluating public services in terms of needs. This paper explicates the conceptual distinction between demands and needs in terms of derived demand and information asymmetry. ‘Needs’ can be defined as ‘rational demands’, where ‘ration…
Challenging Professional Roles
The bulk of care in the community is carried out by lay carers. Recent policy initiatives to support them in the United Kingdom are outlined. There remains evidence of significant gaps in support from professional health and social‐care workers including community nurses. This paper reports three studies of lay carers: those caring for older people, carers of technology‐dependent children, and home‐care workers involved in the “direct payments” s…
A subtle governance
In many countries governments are recruiting the medical profession into a more active, transparent regulation of clinical practice. Consequently the medical profession adapts the ways it regulates itself and its relationship to health system managers changes. This paper uses empirical research in English Primary Care Groups (PCGs) and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to assess the value of Courpasson's concept of soft bureaucracy as a conceptualisatio…
Governmentality by Network in English Primary Healthcare
In England, the quality of clinical work is being regulated in new ways following recent developments in “clinical governance” policy and apparent failures in the previous system of medical self‐regulation. Using multiple case studies, this paper examines how these changes are affecting professional governmentality and discipline in general practice. Formal organizational structures play little role in clinical governance there. Clinical quality …
Exit, voice, governance and user-responsiveness
Patient and carer perceptions of case management for long-term conditions
Nurse-led case management programmes have become increasingly popular over the last 15 years. Countries such as the USA, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands have long running case management programmes in place for frail elderly people. The Department of Health in England has recently introduced a 'community matron' role to provide case management to patients with highly complex long-term conditions; a group that is predominantly comprised of elde…
Is Evidence‐Based Organizational Innovation in the NHS a Chimaera – Or Just Elusive
Evidence‐based adoption of organizational innovations requires explicit definition of the outcomes the innovations are intended to produce. Implementation theory, however, suggests that organizational innovations are often politicized in the sense that the prospect of implementing them provokes conflicts of interests among the parties affected. Then the intended outcomes of the innovation are liable to be formulated ambiguously, misleadingly or n…
The Professionalization of General Practitioners with a Special Interest
This article critically examines the professionalization of General Practitioners with Special Interests (GPSIs) in the UK. Drawing on empirical research it examines the rationale for the establishment of this professional grouping; the construction of the field of expertise; the negotiation of boundaries with other professions; issues of professional control and autonomy; and internal organization. It concludes that the professionalization of GP…
Governing Old Age
This article applies a Foucauldian approach to an examination of contemporary policy and practice towards older people, specifically a model of case management designed to manage older people 'at risk' of hospital admission. The article proceeds by reviewing old age policy over three historical time periods, emphasizing discontinuities and mutations, in an attempt to problematize the principles underlying case management. It then draws on empiric…
The 'Good Carer
Informal carers in the context of late modernity must negotiate two potentially conflicting discourses. One is associated with a post-traditional and increasingly individualized society characterized by 'pure' relationships with an emphasis on authenticity and choice. The other is a more traditional discourse found particularly in current health and social policy which relies explicitly on significant input by family carers. This ar ticle analyse…
The role of governmentality in the establishment, maintenance and demise of professional jurisdictions
This paper examines the professionalising of geriatric medicine in the UK roughly between the 1940s and the 1970s and locates it in terms of the broader context of the relationship between the professions and the state. It looks at how this relationship shaped geriatric medicine's professional jurisdiction, including the discourses of expertise on the one hand and the constituting of the 'subjects' of such expertise on the other. In contrast to o…
Health, illness and normality
Knowing as practice
A new political anatomy of the older body? An examination of approaches to illness in old age in primary care
This paper examines the new approaches to older bodies found within primary care, with the purpose of determining whether they represent a significant disjunction from established approaches in geriatric medicine. A genealogical review of clinical approaches to certain conditions commonly found in old age is undertaken utilising (a) key texts of pioneering British geriatricians and (b) three editions of a key textbook of general practice, publish…
Biology as destiny? Rethinking embodiment in ‘deep’ old age
Despite sociological understanding that bodies are social and morphological, material and discursive, there is a persistent, prevailing tendency within sociology to approach the old body – particularly in ‘deep old age’ – as non-social. No longer amenable either to reflexive (consumerist) choice, or expressive of the self, it is viewed rather through a biomedical explanatory framework in which it is held to succumb to ‘natural’ physiological proc…
Political science (29 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Psychology (24 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Medicine (16 obras) · Health care (14 obras) · Public relations (14 obras) · Gender Studies (12 obras) · Healthcare innovation and challenges (12 obras) · Social Psychology (12 obras)